


For a Given Value of Normal

by chickenlivesinpumpkin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Play, Anal Sex, Angst, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Bad Decisions, Blood and Injury, Bondage and Discipline, Communication Failure, Don't Try This At Home, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epiphanies, Face-Fucking, First Time, Heavy BDSM, Humiliation, Internal Conflict, Learning Disabilities, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Oral Sex, Pining, Rough Sex, Spanking, Verbal Humiliation, Whipping, cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 17:53:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4715063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickenlivesinpumpkin/pseuds/chickenlivesinpumpkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Realizing he's gay is one thing. This unholy mess with Malfoy is something else entirely.</p><p>In which Harry tries to negotiate the path from self-loathing to some sort of happiness, and in the process learns that Malfoy runs a shop, reads Muggle philosophy, and is a dirty rotten liar.</p><p>Well, that last one isn't really a surprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For a Given Value of Normal

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thanks to my beta, who spent almost an hour trying to put her very complicated feelings into words about why she wanted to punch Harry in the nards so that I could address that issue. =D There are some mild spoilers (nothing very specific) in the rest of these notes, but if you're at all sensitive to issues of consent or abuse, I highly recommend you read this before continuing. Hopefully, it'll spare anyone needless trauma. 
> 
> 2\. Okay, to be square up front, most of this fic is a very good example of how NOT to have BDSM sex. So just in case anyone is horrified by what the boys get up to for a big chunk of this story, that's okay, you should be, and I'm definitely not recommending that anyone play this way. I wanted to explore the consequences of bad BDSM behavior on people and relationships as well as the ways that safe, sane, and consensual play work for the good of Doms as well as subs.
> 
> 3\. Due to the badness of technique here, there are several emotionally messy scenes that could be perceived as abusive and/or violent. If you are at all sensitive to really rough sex (i.e. punching during an unnegotiated scene, etc.) this is NOT the fic for you. I tried to tag thoroughly, but if anyone has suggestions for anything else I might add, please comment so I can add them. My goal is not to offend or traumatize anyone.
> 
> 4\. I own no part of Harry Potter and am making no money on this.

Harry isn’t entirely sure how it happens.

After waving good-bye to Ron, he lets the pub door fall closed behind him, cutting off the music and conversation. Minding his footing with the caution of the thoroughly tipsy, he breathes the cold, December night in deeply, hurting his lungs. He’s tired, but he doesn’t want to go home. With Ginny and the kids in Holyhead for the past few years, Grimmauld Place is too big and full of shadows; it’s a constant reminder of all the things that are missing.

He wonders when he’d gotten old.

Then he’s crashing into someone coming round the corner. He stumbles, is caught by a warm hand under his elbow, and says, “Thanks, mate, that almost got away from me.” He looks up, a little embarrassed at nearly falling on his arse, and stares into pale gray eyes.

He truly doesn’t know what comes over him. It’s been ages since he’s even gotten into an argument with someone. Middle-aged men with mild depression who work desk jobs, live alone, don’t date, and only see their children on alternate weekends have very little to fight about.

It’s instinct, that’s all. He sees a mouth first—pink, plump, partly open—and part of him clenches, and then he sees the white-blond hair and pointed features, and everything in him bristles. He wrenches his arm away.

Six years since he’s seen this face up close (and then, only in the papers as part of a _Where Are They Now?_ retrospective about the war), and the first thing he does is pick a fight.

He’s confused about how it happens and why, but honestly, he can’t think anyone would be surprised that it _did_.

*

Later, he’ll parse Malfoy’s reaction down to the second.

It’s something about charity, he thinks, that started it all. Harry remembers seeing Lucius Malfoy at a benefit like, three years ago, which his currently inebriated mind somehow links to cockroaches being able to survive anything. Which he promptly says out loud to the man’s son.

Harry knows how Malfoy will take it. He’s searching his pockets for his wand even before he’s done speaking.

Later, he’ll think back, replay it over and over, looking for a clue. He’d expected Malfoy to get enraged, to curse him or something. And Malfoy had, but not right away—not exactly the way Harry had thought—

In the first five seconds, Malfoy looks taken aback, then confused, before finally landing on recognition. As if he’s finally placed Harry’s comment in some kind of context. He sighs as if annoyed. Or resigned, perhaps, is a better word. He isn’t angry, not then, anyway. He just moves as if to go around Harry’s tipsy arse and leave him in the dust.

Then he pauses. Tilts his head. His aristocratic features take on an air of thoughtfulness. He looks Harry up and down slowly, lips pursing a bit, gaze slightly disdainful.

In retrospect, it was pretty clear. Malfoy had considered, decided, and acted.

Then, and only then, does he call Harry’s mother a fucking cunt.

Yeah, later Harry will decide that violence was pretty much a foregone conclusion at that point.

*

Harry casts the first furious spell, but Malfoy’s the one who throws the first punch, who brings their bodies crashing together to the ground.

They’re both bleeding by that time, and there’s crumbs of broken brick littering them from all the ricocheting curses, bits of rubbish from the demolished bins kicking about in the stinging wind.

Malfoy doesn’t have Harry’s training or his build, but he’s wiry as fuck and he has the instincts of a survivor. He fights like a nasty fucker too, pulling hair, biting, kneeing Harry in the thigh instead of the bollocks only because Harry’s expecting that sort of dirty pool.

It’s been years since Harry’s done more than run around the square or lift some weights in the DMLE gym, and he’s had just enough to drink that he’s clumsy, but he gets Malfoy on his back easily enough, straddles him, lays waste to that pretty face with his fists.

And fuck, that’s—it’s—it feels good. His blood pounding in his veins, the adrenaline soaking into his brain and limbs. To feel Malfoy struggle beneath him…it’s good. He’s on _fire_ it feels so good.

It takes longer than it should for Harry to realize Malfoy’s not hitting back.

Harry climbs off, shaking, shaken, and sits down hard. His legs are rubber.

“Jesus,” he whispers. It’s a sign of how bad things are; he’s given up most of his conditioned Muggle responses. _Merlin_ leaps to his lips without thought except for when he’s really rocked, and then he sounds like Aunt Petunia of all people.

His sole comfort is that Malfoy is breathing.

He searches for his wand, finds it resting in a crack in the cement next to a wet cardboard box full of—ugh—rotting cabbages. He groans as he bends to pick it up, trying to remember one of the few healing spells he knows, but nothing’s springing to mind. No choice for it, then. He tries to calm himself; panic won’t help him apparate an unconscious Malfoy to St. Mungo’s.

Except then he turns and finds Malfoy standing just behind him, blood-covered and wobbly. He jumps. “What the fu—are you all right? You’re bleeding. Here, let me—”

Malfoy just looks at him. Like Harry’s a map to a foreign country, like he’s some untraversed road out of hell. It makes Harry uncomfortable. He shifts his weight.

“What?” Harry snaps, then feels instantly like a dick. Malfoy probably has a brain injury—not that he was ever intact to begin with—and Harry’s shouting at him.

Malfoy puts his hands—one of his fingers looks sprained at the very least, likely broken—on Harry’s shoulders and walks him gently backwards until he’s pressed against the brick building.

“Let me take you to a healer,” Harry says. He’s torn between guilt and frustration, and he’s not sure why he lets the bastard maneuver him like this. He just does. “Malfoy, I’m—”

“Shh,” Malfoy whispers. He uses his thumb to open Harry’s trousers and slips his hand—the unbroken one—inside.

“Jesus, Jesus, _Jesus_ _fuck,_ ” Harry chokes out, his cock sliding into Malfoy’s palm like it had been planning this all along. He’s harder than rebar and he’s not sure when that happened. He twists away blindly, shoves Malfoy hard onto his arse in that filthy alley.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Harry hisses. “You don’t just…I’m not…don’t fucking—”

Malfoy climbs painfully to his feet, and walks up to him like Harry hasn’t already proven that he’s willing to break Malfoy’s face if he pushes something he shouldn’t.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Malfoy mutters. He reaches for Harry’s waistband and Harry grabs him, shakes him twice, hard.

“Don’t,” he says. “Keep your fucking hands to—”

Malfoy leans in, sinks his teeth deep into Harry’s shoulder through his t-shirt—he realizes suddenly that his coat is gone—and the pain is blinding. Almost overwhelming the sensation of damp heat, of Malfoy’s _mouth_ against him through the thin layer of cotton. Harry arches, and Malfoy’s hand is in his trousers again. Those nimble fingers are stroking, stroking, pulling and tugging, and Harry’s panting into Malfoy’s dusty, sweaty hair, and it’s good, God it’s good, so good, and Malfoy goes to his knees suddenly.

Harry’s barely had a chance to think about what that signals before Malfoy’s mouth is on his cock, taking him in. Harry bucks helplessly, once, twice, deep into that welcoming warmth, and then yanks himself away. He punches Malfoy again while he kneels there, because Harry’s not…he’s never…he doesn’t want this. He _doesn’t_.

Malfoy crumples, flat on his back once more, and this time he stays there, breathing hard. Harry leans against the wall and shudders, so turned on he can’t think. He stares down at Malfoy, who lifts his head, looks at him for a few seconds, and then pointedly drops his gaze down to Harry’s cock, still exposed, still hard, and Jesus, Harry hadn’t even noticed, but he’s slowly stroking himself.

He makes himself stop, but everything in him _aches._

Malfoy licks his lips, his broken, bleeding lips, like he’s salivating or something.

Harry makes it all of ten seconds before he throws himself on Malfoy. He straddles the narrow shoulders, drives his fingers into Malfoy’s hair, wrenches the other man’s head up, and shoves his cock into that hot, wet mouth.

Malfoy opens up without hesitation, moaning like he wants it. Maybe he does. Harry’s past caring. He only knows that he can’t keep his hips still, that wild heat is filling him from tip to toe, concentrating in his groin. He fucks Malfoy’s mouth hard, making him choke a couple times, but Malfoy’s body remains quiescent beneath him. His hands never even leave the ground, never tighten into fists or move to push Harry away. He just lies there and takes every last thrust.

Harry can feel Malfoy’s stubble against his thighs and his balls, feels it like a living, dirty thing crouched inside him, and he hates it and loves it equally, that roughness so different from a woman’s soft skin. He pumps harder, all his leverage and weight going for it, using Malfoy like he’s expendable, like he’s a thing to be destroyed at Harry’s convenience, and it’s building, building, filling him up, and his bones are burning, his whole body is shaking apart, and he’s coming down Malfoy’s throat with a roar of shocked, impossible, overwhelming pleasure.

He stays bent over Malfoy’s face for long, drugged-seeming seconds. He pulls out slowly, falling onto his knees and then his side, his pants and jeans hanging open, and he’s so _tired_ all of a sudden, tired and disgusted and his head is pounding. He tugs his clothes into place with numb fingers. He doesn’t know who it was that just did these things, but it wasn’t him.

He’s not gay, or at least, he didn’t think so, but that’s not the thing that’s really bothering him, anyway. If it turns out he likes men, well, that’s a thing to deal with, for sure, but it’s the sight of Malfoy, bleeding and spit-wet and limp like a doll on the revolting cement beside him that’s really toying with his head.

“I hope you aren’t waiting for an apology.” Malfoy says then, and his voice—oh, God, he sounds awful, like he’s been strangled.

 _Well, that’s because he has_ , a part of Harry’s brain points out sensibly. _You choked him on your cock._

“Do you need to go to hospital?” Harry asks flatly.

“You haven’t lost your audacity,” Malfoy says in that awful, wrecked voice, which does nothing to conceal the lazy satisfaction in his tone. “Talk about powder kegs, Potter. I always suspected, but—”

“Do you need to go to hospital or not, you fucking piece of shit?” Harry asks, and he means to say it harshly, but it’s shame, pure and simple, that radiates from every word.

Malfoy’s quiet for a moment. “That was consensual, Potter. You didn’t rape me, and you didn’t give me anything I wasn’t looking for.”

Harry wants to believe him, he truly does, because that would get Harry off of any number of uncomfortable hooks at this point, but he has a hard time believing that anyone, even someone as fucked up as Malfoy, could have wanted _this._

A cold breeze shoots through the alley, vicious and snapping, and they both take a moment to shiver and huddle.

“Where are your parents living?” Harry asks.

Malfoy laughs—or makes a noise that would be laughter in someone with intact vocal chords and unbroken ribs. He sounds like a motor struggling to turn over. “Is this the part where noble Harry Potter saves me from myself? Get bent. I don’t need a baby-sitter.”

“You need a fucking warden.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about what I need.” Malfoy’s tired, not angry. He lifts a hand, wipes his mouth tentatively. “I’m fine, Potter. Go about your business.”

So Harry leaves him there.

*

Harry looks at men differently after that. Curiosity first. Then heat. It only takes three days before he’s feeling downright stupid for not having figured it out already.

It’s an adjustment, sure, but compared to the memory of coming down Malfoy’s throat while Malfoy bled and choked and _took it_ , well.

Being gay’s easier to reconcile, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with _that._

*

He takes the kids ice skating at a Muggle rink on Saturday, and he’s far too old for this shit—thirty-seven year old bones were not meant for this kind of repeated concussion. He half expects to break a hip. Between trying not to fall and wrangling the million questions and stories that his children are throwing his way, it’s exhausting, and after the first hour, he has to sit on the bench. He watches while they play and holler and make obnoxious noises, and he smiles his first smile of the week when James says something arrogant and his siblings team up to take him down together, although Harry casts a surreptitious cushioning spell before any of them hit the ground.

He pretends he’s not amused when he tells them to stop mucking about before someone breaks a leg.

After the kids are finally bored, they go out for ice cream even though it’s cold enough to freeze someone solid if they stand still long enough. The shop is packed, loud and full of jostling bodies, and Harry has a moment of complete disorientation where everything seems abruptly fake and plastic. Like he’s on a movie set instead of walking through the real world. He has to put a hand against the glass case holding the frozen cakes in order to get his balance.

James and Al are hovering on the edge of a wrestling match, and Lily’s mad about something one of her brothers said while they were skating and they don’t notice that there’s a loud buzzing filling his ears. They don’t notice anything until it’s their turn to order, because they’re normal kids, which means they can be self-involved when they’re happy, and Harry wants them to be happy, normal, self-involved kids, so he swallows hard and forces himself to straighten. He nods at the girl behind the counter as James orders pistachio, trying desperately to get his head back in the game.

Harry pulls out his wallet only to realize he doesn’t have any more Muggle money on him and he has to pretend that he left it in the car. He says he’s leaving the kids as collateral—a joke that no one finds funny—then spends a hasty minute transfiguring bills in the parking lot.

He doesn’t let himself think about the last time things seemed real. His kids make enough noise that he can hear them across whatever divide usually separates him from the world, but today even they can’t disperse this sense of hollow emptiness.

A few days later, the kids go back to Hogwarts, and Harry resigns himself to silence until Easter.

*

Malfoy comes to his home three weeks after the day in the alley. He looks perfectly put together but for his windswept hair and the agitation in his lean body. There isn’t a single bruise discoloring the porcelain skin, so Malfoy must have taken a potion or cast a spell—he’d been beaten badly enough that there should still be signs if they’d been left to heal normally.

Harry’s a tiny bit grateful—he’s been trying not to imagine Malfoy walking around swollen and discolored, if only because the thought of those marks fills Harry with revulsion.

Harry starts to slam the door in his face, but Malfoy wedges a foot in. “Hear me out, Potter, will you, before you run squealing like a terrified piglet?”

“Fuck you.”

Malfoy doesn’t move his foot, and it’s getting a little undignified to still be shoving at the door, so Harry sighs and lets it go.

“Invite me in,” Malfoy says.

“No.”

Malfoy lifts an eyebrow. “Really, Potter? Here? On the porch?” He sucks in a breath as if scandalized. “You dirty fiend. I could never. I’m shocked, absolutely shocked.” He hesitates, one corner of his mouth rising in a smirk, and then abruptly claps his hands. Business-like, he says, “Well, if we must.”

He unwinds his scarf, unbuttons his coat, and begins to unbutton his shirt. “Can you believe this weather?” he asks matter-of-factly.

Harry grabs him by the lapel and hauls him into the entryway. “You’re a fucking piece of work,” he bites off, throwing the door closed so hard that the foundations of the house rock. “You think you’re funny, but you’re really sick, you know that?”

“Tomato, tomahto,” Malfoy says, looking around with barely-concealed interest. “Why, Potter, you never told me you lived in a mausoleum. How avant-garde of you.”

For a second, Harry’s too hung up on the sheer Muggle-ness of Malfoy’s first comment to respond. Then he grits out, “What do you want?”

“Can I have a drink at least?”    

“You won’t be here long enough to drink it.”

“Do you treat all your lovers so callously?” Malfoy affects a pout, and Harry nearly punches him in the face.

“You and I aren’t lovers,” Harry snaps. “What we did in that alley was…that didn’t have anything to do with love. That was disgusting. That was…I don’t even have words for how fucked up that was.”

He can’t help remembering it: Malfoy on his knees, his wet, hot mouth working over Harry’s cock, then the feel of Malfoy’s jaw beneath his knuckles. The impact of the blow radiating up his arm. Then, finally, the sensation of Malfoy beneath him, opening up under Harry’s strength and determination, yielding whole-heartedly, giving Harry full authority over his body, his mouth, his throat, even his breath…

The power of it. The thrill.

“Disgusting,” Harry whispers, and shudders a little.

Malfoy’s watching him very closely, and says, “How long had it been?”

“What?” Harry blinks. “Since what?”

“Since you felt something?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Harry says. “You’re not going to tell me that there’s some great, psychological meaning to beating the shit out of someone before you shag them.”

“Maybe not for some people,” Malfoy says, “but then, some people shag gingers or the poor. There’s no accounting for taste.”

“I’m not like that. I don’t want to hurt people, Malfoy. I’m not like you.”

Malfoy looks surprised briefly. “Oh, I don’t want to hurt anyone, Potter. I want to _be_ hurt. Very different.”

“Still disgusting.”

Malfoy sighs. “It’s okay if you liked it.”

“Is it? Hitting the person I’m with is okay? It would be okay if I hit Ginny?”

“Of course not. Your Weasley ex-wife probably creams pure vanilla. She wouldn’t get off on it.” He says this as if it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say. His expression doesn’t change even when Harry grabs him and shoves him hard against the wall. Malfoy’s head connects with the wood and his breath explodes out of him in a pant.

He doesn’t lift a hand to protect himself. He simply stands there, crushed against the wall.

“Don’t ever fucking talk about her that way,” Harry growls.

“It’s nothing against her, truly. ‘My kink is not your kink’ and all that.” Malfoy waves a pale, long-fingered hand in the air. He seems utterly unbothered by the fact that Harry is on the verge of knocking his face in.

“That’s not kink, that’s—”

“What we did in that alley wasn’t violence, Potter,” Malfoy interrupts, sounding faintly exasperated. “You were hard before I opened your jeans, remember? So was I. Not violence. Sex. And it’s good that you don’t have sex with people who don’t want it, but since I do want it, this is all a moot point. Therefore: acceptable. So come on, get your coat.”

Harry blinks at him. “What?”

“It’s January,” Malfoy points out. He gives a pretend shiver. “Brr. Button up!”

Harry stares at him for a second. The gray eyes are clear and steady on his; he seems, all evidence to the contrary, sane enough. Harry takes a sniff, searching for alcohol fumes, but finds only cologne, something dark and clean that smells entirely too good on Malfoy’s skin. Harry reluctantly lets him go, then takes several quick steps back.

He can’t help noticing that Malfoy has aged well; except for some lines spanning outward from his eyes and a little softness around his pointy jaw—which is actually a good look for him—it’s hard to tell he’s on the slope to forty.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Harry says, giving himself a mental shake. What does it matter that Malfoy’s holding up well?

“Of course you are. You want to. On some level you know you want to. You just don’t want to know that you know that you want to. If you know what I mean.” He starts patting his pockets, probably looking for his gloves.

Confused, Harry shakes his head. “I’m not like you,” he insists. “I’m not a fr—”

Malfoy looks up from his search when Harry goes silent. He tilts his head to one side. “Did we just have a thought?” Malfoy asks.

“I’m not a freak,” he murmurs.

Malfoy’s expression shifts, much like Harry suspects a psychiatrists’ would when his patient says something revealing. It’s very _ah, there’s the key._

“What makes someone a freak, Potter?” Malfoy asks.

“Need a dictionary, do we?”

“Humor me.” Malfoy’s eyes soften slightly. “What’s a freak?”

“It’s when you’re not normal,” Harry says, and feels a pang deep in his chest. He leans back against the wall, looking down at the floor, abruptly miserable. He’d thought he’d routed most of that bullshit out years ago. It’s been a long time, anyway, since he’s felt his different-ness as keenly as a blade. He’s always been different; first an orphan and a Boy Who Lived, then a wizard, then an outcast or a Chosen One, depending on who believed him and who was angry at any given time. And granted, that Chosen One thing hasn’t really gone away, but at least there’s no hostility to the looks these days.

All he’s ever wanted was to be normal. To be good.

That night in the alley was a harsh reminder that he’s neither.

“Who decides what’s normal?” Malfoy asks.

Harry shrugs.

“Well, you should probably check your sources if you’re going to make all your choices based on his or her opinions, don’t you think?” Malfoy asks, again with that painfully reasonable voice. “I mean, what if the person who decides on the definition of normal is someone like Gilderoy Lockhart? In that case, it’s probably in your best interest to be decidedly abnormal.”

Harry shakes his head. He feels like he’s aged ten years in the last five minutes. “What the fuck are you doing here, Malfoy?”

The planes of Malfoy’s face are hard to make out in the dimly lit hall from this distance. His eyes and the hollows of his cheeks are shadowed. “There’s something I want you to see. Give me an hour. If you still don’t want anything to do with me, I’ll go, and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“I’m not fucking you in an alley.”

“I should hope not,” Malfoy says, scowling. “Previous interaction aside, _eau de garbage_ is not amongst my many turn-ons. I have something more refined in mind. It’s Muggle; you won’t be recognized, I guarantee it. So get your damn coat already. We’ll have to apparate, and it’s a bit of a hike from the nearest alley.”

“And you’ll leave me alone after? You promise?”

“Absolutely,” Malfoy agrees. He smiles at Harry, slow and sweet but with an undertone of wicked amusement, much like Harry imagines the snake would’ve smiled at Eve. “Assuming you want me to.”

*

He’s too hot. Could be the thrum of the beat electrifying his pulse, warming him up from the inside out. Could be the crush of strangers, indecently draped all over each other, some of them in leather, some of them wearing collars and leashes for crying out loud, yeah, could definitely be them that’s raising the ambient temperature to impossible levels. Could be the drinks that Malfoy keeps pressing into his palms, that Malfoy is paying for, that Malfoy could be doing Merlin knows what to. Harry’s seen enough in his years as an Auror to know what can happen to someone who doesn’t know what’s in their drink, but his hand keeps accepting full glasses and handing back empty ones.

“Drunk enough yet?” Malfoy asks, leaning close so that Harry can hear him over the music, which is set at the perfect volume to encourage such proximity.

“Gotta piss,” Harry says.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Pure class, aren’t you, Potter? Down the hall, past the cock statue that is supposed to be art but isn’t, turn left. Don’t fall in, because I’ll fucking leave you to drown.”

Harry goes, surprised that he isn’t too far gone to walk. He weaves through the crowd, leaning on people here and there, apologizing clumsily. The music is almost painfully loud back here, but he doesn’t exactly mind it. It’s a dark rhythm, one that makes him feel edgy and aggressive, one that reminds him of the first time he kissed Ginny, of that possessive monster that took up half his chest that whole year. That monster is a pale imitation of the one that took him over a few weeks ago, though. He’d never wanted to hurt Ginny, even during the worst parts of the divorce, never could’ve lifted a hand to her. He knew she’d been the same, tired, sad at being forced to admit that if they didn’t start looking for something better they’d drain the last of the possibility from each other and take the kids’ happiness with them. She’d been angry at times, but never mean. Never hateful, not his Ginny. She was everything he equated with spirit and goodness, everything any man could wish for.

Nothing like the viper waiting for him at the bar.

Harry can’t piss until his erection goes down. It takes a few minutes.

*

He can hear the throb of the music still pounding away upstairs. That large space with the milling, vinyl-clad bodies seems very far away from this small room, which is one of a dozen in the basement. They’re entirely private but for a single girl at a desk waiting at the end of the hall; Harry supposes she’s there to manage who goes where or perhaps she’s only there in case of trouble.

But here, inside, it’s only the two of them, some easily-wiped down furniture, and a lot of terrifying, intimidating, fascinating items in a cabinet.

“Now what?” Harry asks. His words sound squeezed, like he’s been muzzled or choked. He drops his hands like they’ve been burned, but the sensation of skin and slick hide clings to his fingertips. His eyes keep going back to those delicate wrists, so pale and fragile, encased in black leather.

Malfoy looks up. His eyes are clear; unlike Harry, he hasn’t had anything to drink. “Now anything.”

*

When it’s over, Harry leaves Malfoy crumpled there on the floor, eyes half-closed, chest heaving, mouth slack with satisfaction. Harry feels carved out. Hollow. Doesn’t think it’s right, doesn’t know what the fuck to think, actually, but he leaves anyway. Tells the girl in the hallway that Malfoy’s gonna need help getting uncuffed. She looks at him like he’s shit stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

He doesn’t care. He’s loose-limbed for the first time in years. Nothing could kill this swerve.

He goes home and falls into bed.

*

The next morning, Harry wakes up so sore that he feels like an old man, bent at the waist while his back muscles relax.

Lifting your arm for that many blows gets tiring, especially since navigating the arc of a whip doesn’t come naturally to him.

He forces himself to make breakfast even though it would be easier to pick something up on the way to the office. He only allows himself to eat out three times a week (excepting nights when he works late and everyone pitches in for something to be delivered), because he refuses to lose the habit of cooking. Kitchens are the centers of families, he knows, and however much the room might ring with emptiness during the week, he wants it to stay lived in. He won’t let his children leave a home to visit him in a house. It _will_ feel good for them here.

He goes to work and exhausts himself with reports and liars and cursed objects and politicians and the unending whispers of _oh, it’s Harry Potter!_

You’d think they’d get tired of that. It’s been more than twenty years. You’d think that the amount of fame that comes with murdering someone would have run out by now. It makes him itchier than it usually does—he’s as far away from being that boy as he is from being on the moon, and that’s never been clearer than it is at this moment. He’d thought he’d forgotten what it feels like to be that boy, to be hungry and hurting and angry but willing to stand against the kind of cruelty that he’s only now suspecting lies within himself.

The worst part is how _good_ it feels.

Despite his exhaustion and the vague hang-over, his whole being feels suffused with some vaguely dangerous electricity. Waiting for the elevator, he bounces on his toes. He snaps at the witch defending the wife-beating bastard that he arrested last week, catches her client in a lie, watches her blink and stutter, and slaps the flat of his hand against the table with a rebellious lurch of glee in his stomach. He gets through a backlog of paperwork in a matter of hours, and even though his head is aching by the time he’s done, he sits back with an actual smile on his lips.

He’s breathing again. He’s not even sure how that happened.

“You’ve been ridiculous all day, mate. Did you get laid or something last night?” Ron asks, hustling into his office, watching him with a smirk, arms laden with lunch things.

Harry’s struck with a burst of potent, violent heat. For the first time, he lets himself remember white skin, hot flesh, trembling limbs, and soft, tremulous moans.

He remembers Malfoy saying _you can do whatever you want. fuck me. hurt me._ Remembers dropping the whip, awkwardly lubing up, prying round buttocks apart with unpracticed fingers, and eventually, finally, shoving his cock deep. Remembers the way Malfoy’s pants sped up in response _._

Like that, he’s so fucking hard. He’s grateful for the desk so Ron won’t see. The thought of anyone seeing, or knowing, makes him ill.

He’s not like this. He’s not. It might feel good, but he’s not like them, the freaks. Or worse, the men and women who search for power over others because the abuse of the weak makes them strong in comparison.

He unclenches his fists, rubs his sweaty palms along his thighs to dry them. Tries not to think of the scar on the back of his hand. He won’t be like that. He _won’t._

“No,” he says, a little hoarse. “Didn’t get laid.”

At the end of the day, he goes home alone. He firecalls Ginny and they chat for a while. He shouts a hello to Glenn, who is Muggle-born and kind and incredibly impossible to resent, and Glenn waves from his seat on the sofa, but is apparently too comfortable to get up, making Ginny shake her head. “Lazy arse,” she says conspiratorially, but she’s happy. She looks younger than she has since they had Lily, and Harry can smile.

It doesn’t sting anymore.

He forces himself to cook dinner. He eats at the table, then does the dishes in the quiet. As he washes, Harry remembers the taste of Malfoy’s tears, the way the skin between his shoulder blades felt soft as silk, the jump of Malfoy’s muscles as Harry hit him with the whip.

He steps back abruptly, hard and shaking, his hands dripping soapy water all over the floor, and realizes that for the first time in years, the silence has an air of presence even though there’s no one else here. There’s a sense of waiting. Of something thick and heavy and vulnerable.

It’s not the house; it’s Harry. He’s taking up space again. He’s present. Breathing.

Something has happened, and the world around Harry has taken notice.

He wonders if Malfoy feels it too.

*

The next time Malfoy shows up and orders him to get his coat, Harry says no.

“I don’t want to be that person,” Harry explains, thinking of Voldemort, of Umbridge, of Lucius Malfoy and anyone else who wants to accrue power. The best of them are able to realize the dangers in it and turn their backs on the urge, like Dumbledore, and Harry has firsthand experience with what happens to those who don’t.

“There’s no such thing as ‘that person,’” Malfoy replies. “There’s only happy people and liars.”

But Harry still says no, and eventually Malfoy curses and leaves.

Harry pretends that he isn’t home the next time Malfoy comes by, even when Malfoy calls him a coward through the door.

Harry can take that. Better a coward than a lord.

*

The world slowly bleeds back to bland. He gets up, he makes breakfast, he goes to work. He comes home tired and dull, a knife without an edge, resigned to living in a block of wood, and if he dreams about his muscles singing and his heart pounding and his cock desperate to plunge, then that’s too damn bad.

*

On February 2nd, Harry opens his front door to find Malfoy leaning on the bell. It’s been twenty-minutes now, and the thing has gone from a pleasant chime to something that sounds like a continuously yelping dog.

“What?!” Harry shouts. “What could you possibly want that is worth this racket, you psychotic twat?”

“Are you going to make me pick a fight?” Malfoy asks bluntly, dropping his elbow, and finally, _finally,_ the dying dog noise stops. He’s trying to look calm, but he’s wound tight as a spring, fingers clenched on the folds of his robes. “Or can we just go?”

Harry almost tells him to stuff it, but the words won’t come. Besides, there are better ways to make Malfoy pay for being a bastard.

“Come back in an hour,” he snaps, just to make the shit wait, just to remind them both which of them has the power. He slams the door in Malfoy’s face and goes to take some headache potion, checking the label thoroughly first, to make sure it can be combined with alcohol.

*

It goes like that for a while. Malfoy shows up (with no discernible pattern to his visits), waits wordlessly on the stoop while Harry gets his coat, and they go to the club. Malfoy buys him drinks until the jump in his stomach shifts from nausea to excitement, and then they go downstairs, where Harry hurts Malfoy until they’re both wild with need before fucking him until they’re both limp. Then Harry leaves him there in a wreck on the floor and, on nights when Malfoy’s bound, tells the girl in the hallway to open his restraints.

He almost enjoys that part the most—knowing that Malfoy, for whom dignity is everything, is forced to let some stranger look at him with pity as she removes the cuffs from his wrists. The humiliation of it must be potent. It’s enough to get Harry hard again some nights. Of course, by then, he’s usually back to thinking of all the ways that he’s a disgusting freak, so the second erection just makes him sick.

It’s ugly and dirty and sweat-tinged and it’s everything, everything, everything that keeps him alive.

*

One day, while he’s brushing his teeth in the morning, Harry realizes it’s March. He’s been fucking Malfoy—or whatever you want to call it—for two and a half months now.

He’d thought, rather stupidly it seems now, that he would just need to get this out of his system a bit, and then things would go back to normal. It could just be this dark period of his life that he got over and could forget about.

It isn’t going away, though. Last week he cancelled dinner with Hermione and Ron because he suspected Malfoy might come by. He’d been right, which hadn’t really been a comfort. While his best friends were plating their roast, Harry had been cuffing Malfoy’s hands behind him. While they were sitting down to eat, Harry had been sliding an anal hook into Malfoy’s arse. While they were cutting meat and dowsing potatoes in gravy, Harry had been strapping the anal hook to the back of a leather collar round Malfoy’s throat. While Hermione and Ron were enjoying their loving, happy, normal evening, Harry had fucked Malfoy’s face, jerking his head in his hands so that with every thrust, the strap on the collar tugged on the hook, putting pressure right on Malfoy’s prostate.

Malfoy had come before he had, and Harry had ignored it, just kept shoving deeper and deeper into Malfoy’s throat, blindly and without hesitation, the same way he's falling deeper and deeper into Malfoy’s trap.

It’s bothering him a little bit less than it did. It doesn’t feel normal, but he’s starting to acclimate, to resign himself to the fact that he can’t fight it. He’s relatively sure that’s not a good thing.

*

“You really never fucked men before me?” Malfoy asks once, while the sweat cools on their bodies. Harry can hear the throbbing music from upstairs, and he wants a shower badly. He always feels filthy when they’re finished, like his skin is coated with something gross.

“No.”                                                                                                 

Malfoy makes a face that clearly means _if you say so, pal._ Harry could talk about wanting Ginny feverishly, about watching that need atrophy over the years and not knowing why. About looking at women and being uninspired to do anything to remedy his loneliness.

But he doesn’t want to. He and Malfoy aren’t…they don’t do that. All of their conversations revolve around sex, and this gets too close to the line. So he decides to stay quiet. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself asking, “What do you get out of doing it this way?”

“Well, the stench of horny strangers is not one of my many turn-ons, but beggars and all that. It’s not like you’re going to come home with me, are you?”

“I meant the beatings and the rest of it.”

“ _Oh_.” Malfoy looks over, and he should be disgusting. He should be as unattractive as it’s possible to be—he’s covered in melted wax and sweat and Harry’s come—but Harry can’t help swallowing, because Malfoy’s also completely unashamed. Harry’s brutally jealous of him in these moments, when the bastard is so easygoing about his perversion. “ _That_.”

“Yeah, _that._ ”

Malfoy considers, giving the comment its due. He shrugs, gives a stifled gasp of pain, and carefully returns to his previous position. Eventually he says, “I had my very first orgasm at thirteen when one of my uncles paddled my bare arse bloody for breaking a family heirloom. He didn’t notice, not even when he let me go and I fell down and couldn’t talk. The incest element disturbed me for quite some time, and fortunately never turned out to be part of the attraction, but the humiliation and pain were like fucking Christmas.” He gives Harry an eloquent glance. “Honestly, after a while I gave up worrying about why. It’s just what gets me off and makes me happy. I fought it for a long time, felt dirty and wrong and all that, but in the end I decided that if I want to get fucked by someone who strips the skin off my arse, then that’s my fucking prerogative as a free adult in this great wizarding nation of ours. And fuck anyone who doesn’t like it.”

Harry rolls onto his side, propping his head up on one hand. He couldn’t drag his gaze from Malfoy now if it would kill him. “Don’t you want to be normal?”

“There’s no such thing as normal, Potter,” Malfoy says. “It’s a nonsense word that people use to bully other people into fitting into convenient little boxes so they don’t have to think about things that make them uncomfortable. It’s so vague and subjective as to be utterly useless.”

“No it’s not,” Harry argues. “It means being like everyone else.”

“And why is that a good thing? C’mon, really. Explain to me why you being just like Mrs. Housecoat of the suburbs, peeping over the hedges and using her wand to eavesdrop, is a good thing.”

Harry can’t think of a reason, but he knows—he _feels,_ anyway—that it’s true. He puts his head back down. “You don’t know how they look at you when you’re different.”

Malfoy laughs. “You bloody moron. I know exactly what it feels like to have someone try to take you apart with their eyes because you’re not ‘normal.’” Malfoy lifts one arm, twists to reveal the Dark Mark burned above his wrist. “Besides, even if I believed in the innate goodness of being ‘normal’, that ship has sailed.”

Harry’s eyes flit away from the marred skin almost as soon as they land. He can feel Malfoy’s fingers come to land on his forehead, brushing ever so lightly against his scar as he murmurs, “For you as well, I think. Might as well enjoy yourself. Or is the thought of some random arsehole on the street giving you a dirty look all it takes to make you deny a whole part of yourself? Fuck, Potter, I thought you were supposed to be brave.”

Harry kind of wants to hit him, but he can’t work up the righteous indignation required. He’s too…something. Too tired maybe. He changes the subject instead. “It’s not just that. I don’t want to be…like _him.”_

Funny how, after decades of saying his name, Harry stutters over it now.

Malfoy gets it instantly, of course he does. “You never could be, Potter. Trust me on this, all right? You’re night and day to him.”

Harry wants to believe him. Wants to ask Malfoy to say it again, to keep saying it until Harry can’t deny it, but he can’t let himself be that weak. As much as he and Malfoy have a sort of détente in these moments, he can’t allow himself to forget that this is still _Malfoy._

So he changes the subject. “You can’t find many people who want to do this kind of shit.”

Malfoy studies him, then says slowly, “Most people don’t get it, that’s true. A lot of the ones who get it won’t do it. There are the occasional open-minded ones who are willing to try if they like you or want to fuck you badly enough, and then there are a few, a rare, lovely few who are like you.”

“Like me,” Harry repeats flatly.

“Men who get off on hurting me.” Malfoy stares up at the ceiling. He sounds like he’s talking about something else when he adds, “And you lot are like heroin straight into the vein. Can’t say no, even if you tear me up.”

“Thought that was the point,” Harry says.

“There are different ways to hurt,” Malfoy says. He seems to have lost all his willingness to talk. He gets up stiffly, avoiding Harry’s eyes.

*

Over the Easter hols, Ron and Harry are out with Hugo, James, and Al for a boys’ afternoon when they stumble across Malfoy and his son in Honeydukes.

At first, Harry can’t move or speak. The edges of his vision go black and he’s weak-kneed; he’s suddenly certain that everyone in the room knows the horrible things he’s been doing with Malfoy. He slowly takes his hand off of Al’s shoulder even though he actually wants to grip tightly to the cotton of his son’s shirt.

He doesn’t look at Malfoy. He stares at the floor, where it’s safe. Where he can’t give anything away.

People are talking but they sound far away, distant behind the buzzing in his head. It takes quite some time before he realizes that Ron is shoving him gently. “Harry!”

“Yeah?” he asks, tongue blundering and awkward.

“Blimey, mate, I thought you were having a stroke or something. I asked if that’s all right with you?” There’s legitimate confusion in Ron’s voice, and—to Harry’s ears—considerable tension.

Harry blinks. Even as the world slowly fades back into view—color and depth returning—he realizes that Malfoy’s son looks frighteningly similar to the memory Harry carries of Malfoy as a boy. He’s pale and slight and his expression carries just a hint of a sneer. It’s countered, however, by a healthy dose of humor, and the boy is—this gives Harry a punch in the stomach—talking excitedly with Hugo, reaching up to give the redhead noogies while grinning. And Hugo is grinning back, entirely at ease, even downright warm.

Harry looks at Ron, who gives him a tight, careful glance.

“If what’s all right?” Harry asks.

He hears Malfoy from his left but still doesn’t look over; he makes his gaze remain on Ron, his best friend, who can never, ever know about the things Harry craves, the things he _does_. Malfoy’s voice is carefully bland as he says, “I can take them back to the Manor for a match if no one minds.”

Now Harry glances at Malfoy—he can’t help it. “A match of what?”

It comes out hostile—he can’t help that either.

Malfoy’s cool and crisp in his trousers and coat, even as he delivers a sharp stare that’s clearly meant to tell Harry to pull his head out of his arse. “The kids want to play Quidditch.” He says it slowly, like he’s talking to someone with a brain injury. “The Manor has an enormous field. For some strange reason my offspring can stand your offspring’s existence. Am I making this too complicated for you, Potter?”

Ron snorts, although it’s swiftly muffled.

Harry can’t say anything for a second because the world has obviously gone fucking insane, and as the last reasonable man on the planet, Harry doesn’t dare give away just how mental they all are. He looks at his boys. James is playing with Scorpius’s hair now, talking about dying it black, and Al’s snickering, but he’s got such a sweet, soft enjoyment in his eyes as he looks at Scorpius that Harry doesn’t know what to make of it. And Hugo’s talking loudly about wanting to try Scorpius’s new broom, and Scorpius nods easily, like it’s nothing at all to him to share his things, and this is so fucking bizarre.

“Whatever,” he says blankly, because he just doesn’t know what else to do.

“That’s some invested parenting there, Potter,” Malfoy says, rolling his eyes. Ron fucking _laughs_ , although he tries to cover it up, and Harry looks at him with such stunned, hurt disbelief that Ron flushes bright red and winces.

Then the children are waving good-bye, chattering away happily, with Malfoy saying something dry that makes James cackle like a dyspeptic hyena, and Harry is just. Not. Well, sure about. Well, any of this. It’s all—wrong. Wrong.

“What the fuck,” he says to Ron when the kids and Malfoy are gone.

“Okay,” Ron says, and he’s swallowing hard, lifting his chin. “Give me five minutes to explain before you kill me, will you? We should, uh, take this outside first, though, because you’re probably going to yell—and I’m going to let you, as much as you want, because I know how you like to yell—but that’s really more of an outdoor activity, don’t you think?”

Then Ron’s guiding him outside and down the path, catching Harry a couple times when he stumbles over roots because he’s still not entirely _here._

“Okay, so here it is,” Ron says grimly, and Harry realizes that they’re alone outside of the Shrieking Shack. It’s a familiar, if desolate, spot, and Harry’s reminded of a million different bonds and acts of loyalty between himself and Ron over the years. His knees feel shaky again, and he sits on a nearby log.

“Hugo barely made it through Transfiguration first year, remember?” Ron asks.

“Yeah.”

“And second year was worse. Hours and hours of practicing, and even Hermione couldn’t get it through his head. Just—blocked. Kid was in knots, thinking he was gonna be left back from all his friends, thinking he was stupid. Merlin, he kept breaking out in tears whenever someone mentioned anything to do with school or smarts, remember?”

“I remember.”

“And we didn’t know how to help him, and apparently he was starting to get teased pretty badly, and we had all these meetings with McGonagall and the teacher, and it was getting so ugly, he was angry all the time and he was starting to _hate_ school, even all his other subjects.”

Harry does remember; his heart had broken for Hugo, whose normally sunny disposition had become so twisted with self-disgust and anger that he’d been almost unrecognizable.

Ron is still talking: “And the Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws share that class, and one day I guess Hugo just had a meltdown during a lesson, threw some things, and, and, one thing led to another, and Scorpius told his dad about it in a letter. Malfoy realized it was this rare form of learning disability—had an aunt or something with it—and taught Scorpius some ancient family exercises to help counter it, and Scorpius taught them to Hugo, and then things actually just clicked, somehow, and well, Malfoy _fixed it,_ somehow Malfoy fixed my kid, and…and…”

Ron sighs miserably, looking at his hands.

“Why?” Harry asks.

“I know, I thought that too,” Ron says, nodding quickly. “That there had to be a motive, and there _was_ , but not a bad one.”

Ron scrubs a big, freckled hand over his face. “Look, Scorpius is a good kid. He’s smart as hell and he’s kind of a sarcastic shit sometimes, but he’s never mean, not like Malfoy used to be, and he’s had all these long, impossible-to-follow conversations with Hermione because Scorpius’s a Ravenclaw to the core, and he really wanted to help Hugo, and Malfoy…he wanted to make Scorpius happy, near as I can tell. As far as Malfoy-type motives go, it’s fairly innocent, yeah?”

Harry finds himself nodding, surprised to find that he means it.

“And when the boys became such good friends, it didn’t seem like such a horrible thing to just let it happen. Hugo was getting his confidence back, and you could see it in his eyes, the way he started to believe that maybe he wasn’t stupid after all, not if a kid as smart as Scorpius liked him.”

“Right,” Harry says dumbly.

“And then one day a while back Al mentioned Scorpius, and I realized they were all friends at school. I didn’t want to bring it up in case you weren’t happy about it.”

“I didn’t know,” Harry says honestly. “Ginny and I decided not to tell them about the history with Malfoy. Didn’t want them going to Hogwarts with baggage, and it seemed unfair to poison them all against each other before they’d even started. It probably never occurred to James or Al to mention Scorpius—they don’t mention everyone they know, I expect.”

“Oh.” Ron clears his throat. “Scorpius invited Hugo to stay over at the Manor for a couple weeks this past summer, and Hermione and me…we weren’t sure. We just weren’t, and Malfoy invited us to stay for dinner to settle our minds and he’s still sort of a git, but it was pretty obvious he was trying really hard, because he loves his kid and Scorpius was really excited, and Hugo was really excited so _we_ tried hard, and Malfoy’s sort of funny sometimes when you aren’t wishing he would fall in a well, and it was hard to be mad…” Ron breaks off, then says again, more quietly, almost helplessly, “Malfoy fixed my kid, Harry. I can’t hate him anymore. I’m sorry.”

Now’s his moment, Harry figures. If there’s ever going to be a good time to confess what he’s been doing and his fear of what it makes him, it would be now. He wouldn’t say it was Malfoy he was doing it with, because part of him can’t bear to ruin Malfoy that way, although he isn’t sure when that changed. But there’s a big difference between having a decent heart that can’t hold out against kindness, like Ron, and being someone who gets off on beating someone up, and he just can’t.

“I understand,” he says, because he does. People get under your skin in surprising ways, accidental ways sometimes, and there isn’t always a logic to it, just an impossible but permanent forgiveness that comes out of nowhere. “It’s okay, Ron.”

Ron exhales hard. His hand clamps down on Harry’s shoulder, and Harry closes his eyes. He wonders if Ron would still want to touch him if he knew.

He doubts it.

*

But Hugo’s story gives Harry an idea.

Harry’s not much of a reader, but he’s smart enough to realize that it’s been countless times now that a book has saved his life. He really could use Hermione’s help this time around, but he doesn’t dare ask her, can’t even bear to imagine what she might say or do if she were to find out. So he goes online and orders a bunch of books.

There’s more than he would’ve expected. A lot more. Apparently, there’s quite the epidemic of people like Harry and Malfoy in the world.

He figures that one of the books has to have a cure. There’s no way that a disorder as frequent and destructive as the one he has could exist without a treatment.

He reads up, determined to find the way out.

It doesn’t take long before he’s tossing the first book aside, and then the second and third, because none of them are about cures, they’re _how-to_ guides.

Like there’s nothing wrong with it.

Harry burns them.

*

Before James and Al go back to Hogwarts, Harry asks them—nonchalantly, he thinks—if they’ve spent much time with Malfoy, Sr. and they start blabbing about all the crazy shit—“stuff, sorry, Dad”—that happened while they were there: apparently, there are all sorts of Malfoy family heirlooms that Mr. Malfoy keeps locked away and says they’re not allowed to go looking for. And sometimes the portraits will say awful things and Mr. Malfoy will threaten them with turpentine if they don’t watch their mouths around Scorpius and his friends. Scorpius told them that Mr. Malfoy tried to take the portraits down but there’s a permanent sticking charm on them, so whenever they tell him he’s a disgrace to the family name, Mr. Malfoy mostly just laughs and tells them to get bent. And hey, maybe next time Hugo goes over to the Manor they could go too, could they? Because Scorpius’s room is really cool and his broom is sooo sweet, it goes, like, so much faster than the newest Cleansweep—

Harry lets them ramble on, and they wander off topic before he has to give an answer. There’s something attractive about the idea of Malfoy walking down a corridor, tall and slim and smug, telling off portraits.

*

The next time Malfoy shows up at his house, Harry follows him to the club with his mind whirling. He leans against the wall of the small room in the basement and watches Malfoy shrug his clothes off. It’s like looking at stranger, but Harry’s the one who’s changed. It’s weird now, to look at those long, pale limbs, at that pointed, handsome face, and think _he’s not the boy I knew; he has a child that he loves. He locked up all the bad family treasures to protect his son. He was nice to a former enemy so his kid could hang out with their kid._

It seems particularly odd to touch Malfoy’s skin, to test its firmness with a leather paddle, all the time thinking _he’s a father. He’s a good father, or at least he wants to be._

Instead of using the bench, couch, or table, he takes Malfoy to the floor; the hardwood has cushioning charms built in, so Malfoy won’t be hurt until Harry wants him to be, andthe whole time, he can’t shake the feeling that Malfoy has tangibility, has presence, in a way he never has before.

Harry is brutal, raising welts as thick as his thumb on Malfoy’s pert arse, shoving Malfoy into demeaning positions, using toys on him that stretch him until his arsehole is painfully swollen and red, saying dirty things meant to arouse and humiliate. Harry keeps him on the edge of orgasm for hours until Malfoy’s half-blind with it, until he’s covered in Harry’s come and shaking and his legs won’t hold him, until he’s sobbing with every breath. But he doesn’t beg. He doesn’t struggle.

Malfoy submits, entirely, whole-heartedly, and it’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing Harry has ever seen—pure and noble and giving. Malfoy’s trust and his desire to serve and please, it’s… _brave._

Harry can’t find anything redeeming about his own tastes, but he sees, suddenly and with a sense of permanence, that there is nothing disgusting about Malfoy.

Finally, when Malfoy’s slowly dragging his trousers on with clumsy, quivering hands, barely able to stand, unwilling to sit on an arse that’s so marked that he clearly has to blink back tears at the feel of the fabric rubbing against the skin, he asks quietly, “Would it help if I apologized?”

Harry’s orgasmed four times to Malfoy’s once, and he’s nearly as exhausted. He’s aware—as Malfoy seems to be—that this has been a punishment, but he’s honestly not sure what it is that Malfoy’s done to provoke it. He can only hope that Malfoy does and will tell him. “What for?” he asks thickly.

“Being real, I assume,” Malfoy whispers. He flinches as he tries to pull his shirt over his shoulders.

“Probably I should be the one apologizing,” Harry says.

Malfoy shakes his head carefully. “Don’t. I violated the rules of the game, didn’t I? I became something other than a body you could use without guilt. I’m not angry, Potter. I get it.”

Harry’s surprised by the strength of his urge to soothe. He wants to touch. He distracts himself by asking, “Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you tell me no?”

“That was the best sex of my life,” Malfoy says, and even though Harry doesn’t get a whiff of dishonesty from the tone, he doesn’t know what to make of Malfoy’s flinching gaze. “I didn’t want you to stop.”

“I think I might be a horrible person,” Harry says, as much to himself as to Malfoy.

“I’d tell you that you aren’t, but…” he pauses to sit down next to his shoes, moving so gingerly that Harry’s reminded again of the extraordinary way Malfoy had trusted him, perhaps unwisely. Malfoy continues almost wistfully, “But I don’t think you’d believe me.”

Harry finds himself kneeling in front of Malfoy, picking up thin, expensive socks and tugging them gently over narrow, bony toes. He slides Malfoy’s feet into his oxfords and ties them for him, remembering the sensation of tying his children’s shoes for them, and the way it had felt to take care of them that way. The feeling of complete, terrifying helplessness at their vulnerability. The sense of awe at how badly he wanted to protect.

He feels something very much like it right now.

He lifts his head. Malfoy’s too wrecked to hide anything, and he’s clearly surprised by Harry’s gesture, surprised and sad and entirely too soft. Harry studies him for a long minute, surprised at himself for finding it lovely.

He strokes his thumb across the knob of Malfoy’s ankle. “Take some time,” Harry says. “Heal thoroughly before you come back to me.” He hesitates. “Assuming you want to come back.”

“I could use spells,” Malfoy says. “Speed it up.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Harry says. The thought of Malfoy wearing his marks willingly, getting off on it, is arousing and even…touching. It’s-It’s something new, he knows, to have this follow them outside of this basement, even if he couldn’t say what it means. But he isn’t sure, in this moment, that he minds all that much.

It’s entirely too tempting, the idea of Malfoy obedient even in Harry’s absence. Submissive to his will at all times, not just here. There’s something almost holy in Malfoy’s offering and Harry’s unwillingness to reject it. It’s a gift, this submission, one that should be honored rather than discarded. Cherished.

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Harry repeats, more firmly.

“Then I won’t,” Malfoy says softly, and the corners of his lips lift slightly.

Harry stands up. “Good.”

*

Harry’s shocked by the sheer number of times he thinks about Malfoy over the next two weeks. He pictures Malfoy pausing in discomfort while picking up something he’s dropped, or choosing a shirt with a high collar to conceal one of the many bruises dotting his throat. Harry feels a burst of pure lust at the idea of Malfoy hissing while running soap over welts in the shower. Maybe Malfoy wanks when he’s done washing, coming with one hand on his cock and the other on the sore skin of his arse, remembering what Harry’s done to him.

Almost as frequent—and far more disturbing—are the times when he catches himself daydreaming about putting Malfoy’s socks on for him: the silky fabric, the hard knob of Malfoy’s ankle, the fragile curve of an instep.

*

Malfoy doesn’t move like he’s in pain when he comes back, but the marks are still there. Harry can’t keep himself from touching them almost wonderingly, pressing here or there to watch Malfoy close his eyes and suck in a breath, tempted, so tempted, to kiss the places where the welts still linger in gratitude of Malfoy’s sacrifice. It brings him a warm shiver to see the evidence of his violence and find it lovely rather than disgusting.

He doesn’t kiss the bruises; it feels like he hasn’t earned the right. But he wants to.

*

Hermione, Harry decides the following weekend, is the worst person ever.

He loves her, and she has a decent heart, but she’s the _worst._

Ron shuffles miserably in front of him, hovering in the doorway of Harry’s office, his DMLE robes wrinkled from where he’s been worrying the fabric, clearly wishing he could be anywhere else. “She’s on a right tear, Harry. Hugo’s teacher owled with a progress report and Hugo’s doing much better. He’s beating some of the Ravenclaws even, and she’s just so _determined_ to repay Malfoy, and I’m not sure how she got it into her head that the right way to do that is to make the two of you come for dinner, but she has, and it’s…fuck, I think I’ll be sleeping on the couch if you don’t agree.”

“Dinner,” Harry repeats.

“Yeah.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“With Malfoy?”

“Yeah.”

“And Malfoy _agreed_ to this?”

Ron’s expression is a mixture of apology, sheepishness, and sheer befuddlement. “They’ve been owling for months about Merlin knows what,” he says helplessly. “She uses his tailor now. Something about lines or seams or something.”

Harry sighs. “Should I bring anything?”

“BYO misery, I guess.” Ron shrugs. “I don’t know, mate. It’s the four of us and Ginny and Glenn. Bring a flamethrower?”

“Glenn’s a nice guy,” Harry says for the millionth time, and Ron scowls. It’s nice, in a way, that Ron’s loyalty to Harry means that he’ll never forgive Glenn for replacing Harry in Ginny’s life, but it’s such old news at this point that Harry’s sort of over it. It seems a little sad-sack, that’s all, to still be mad at the new husband years later.

“I’m sorry,” Ron blurts, clearly meaning the whole dinner-with-Malfoy thing, not the set-my-entirely-decent-brother-in-law-on-fire thing.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah. Still.”

“And Malfoy agreed to this?” Harry asks again, perplexed.

Ron shrugs.  “She asked him, he said yes. All I know.”              

Hermione’s the _worst_.

*

Still, however misguided Hermione’s attempts at reconciliation, it’s Harry’s fault that it goes so badly.

He walks in determined to be pleasant but distant, giving away nothing of what he and Malfoy actually are to each other, but the vibe is wrong from the start and he can’t put his finger on why.

Malfoy’s crisp and handsome in tailored trousers and a button-up, and his hair is gleaming and he’s—he’s smiling at Harry, and it's nervous and, and something else, hopeful, maybe, which makes no sense at all, and just like that, Harry loses his footing, his sense of surety that he can handle this without revealing too much.

Malfoy holds out his hand to shake, as if they’re new acquaintances, as if they’re meeting for the first time, still with that small, anxious smile, and Harry freezes. All he can think is that if he takes Malfoy’s hand, the others will see. They’ll know. Harry won’t be able to hide this maelstrom inside him that is fear and darkness and helpless, overwhelming desire. Instead of shaking Malfoy’s hand, he keeps his own in his pockets, and rather than letting himself get sucked into Malfoy’s gravitational pull, he takes a step back.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Malfoy give a tiny flinch and slowly drop his hand.

Hermione covers for them, pushing drinks on everyone, and Harry gratefully follows her and Ginny into the kitchen, but there’s only so long he can hide there.

He doesn’t know what to say or do, because he’s torn between the hot throb of greed in his belly urging him to touch, to take Malfoy down and hurt him until he submits, and the pulse of sheer terror in his throat that keeps making him imagine how Ron and Hermione will look at him if he does, how Ginny, the mother of his children, will be disgusted.

So he does nothing, contributes nothing to the conversation. Even though he _knows_ he’s behaving coldly, at least this way he can pretend it’s due to loathing one of the dinner guests rather than his shame about the fact that he’s flogged that guest black and blue. And he can’t imagine Malfoy wants to be outed as a pain slut, either, so it’s all for the best, really.

Conversation is stiff and centers round children and work during appetizers in the lounge. As five of them practically live in each other’s pockets, there’s very little news on either score, so it turns into a weirdly invested interrogation of Malfoy, where people are so desperate to fill the awkward silence that they’re asking increasingly personal questions that would never come up at a normal dinner party.

Glenn asks him about his business, which is how Harry learns that Malfoy _runs a bookshop in Muggle London_ where he spends his days reading and arranging book club meetings and chatting with customers about any number of topics _,_ a business he startedprimarily to get out of the house and stay busy with Scorpius at school—although something in his voice makes Harry doubt the veracity of this, but he says nothing—since he’s no need of the money, as the Malfoy fortunes have recovered nicely since the war, and no, the Dark Mark has not faded, although your interest is duly noted, Glenn, thanks.

By this time, Ginny is kicking her husband, who subsides with a shocked look on his face, as if he’s honestly not sure how he came to care so much about Malfoy’s private life. Then, as quiet resumes and everyone stares at the ceiling or the floor once more, Ginny rushes to take her husband’s place as the sovereign of nosy conversationalists.

Ginny asks Malfoy increasingly pushy—if contrite—questions about his family, which is how Harry learns that Malfoy’s ex-wife has all but abandoned Scorpius in the four years since the divorce and that his mother and father have been separated for years and only ever correspond through Malfoy to arrange visits with their grandson, and yes, Malfoy does generally prefer to be present when Lucius is in his son’s company, although he trusts his mother not to impart any inappropriate teachings.

Ron hits on the first truly painless subject, and asks about Scorpius’s grades, which is how Harry learns that Malfoy is incapable of speaking of his son without pride in his voice, something that gives Harry a pang. At least it’s painless until Ron, emboldened by his successful attempts at human interaction, goes too far and starts asking about Malfoy’s feelings about fatherhood and whether he considers himself a success on that front, especially considering his own upbringing, even while he’s darting desperate glances at his horrified wife, clearly begging her to save him.

Hermione rushes in by asking brightly if Malfoy’s seeing anyone, which is when Harry jolts so hard that he spills his wine on his crotch and, in the ensuing rush to get napkins, the subject is dropped. When order is re-established, the topic turns to Quidditch. He tries to nod at appropriate places as people discuss the next year’s World Cup to show that he’s following along with the conversation, but he’s hearing everything as if through a long tunnel, so he’s not sure he’s entirely convincing. Every now and then, talk begins to swerve back towards Malfoy, and Harry holds his breath, wondering if the invasive questions will finally uncover their involvement, revealing Harry’s…whatever you want to call it. His perversion. His obsession. But it never does.

Throughout all of it, Malfoy is thoughtful and polite, if uncharacteristically subdued. He seems to be answering questions solely because he knows that they might all explode of social anxiety otherwise. Hermione’s cheer is so forced by the time the roast is ready that she might as well have hooks in the corners of her mouth stretching her lips into a grin. They manage to stretch the compliments on the food into a good five minutes, but then it goes quiet again. Harry eats as fast as he can, and isn’t surprised that he isn’t the only one shoveling bites into his mouth. Ron’s cheeks are chipmunk-round.

When they’re all full and drinking after-dinner coffee, the mood finally begins to soften. After Harry’s shunning at the front door, Malfoy hasn’t spoken to him beyond the occasional polite _thank you_ or _please pass the sprouts,_ and Harry’s starting to trust that this’ll be the extent of it. He relaxes a little, and as his strain eases, so does some of the room’s discomfort, freeing them to acknowledge just how badly it’s gone and how eager people are to get away.

“God, I’m sorry,” Hermione says eventually, fiddling with her empty coffee mug. “This has just been…oh, it’s been hell. I don’t know what I was thinking. It’s not anything…it shouldn’t be, it’s just dinner, but it’s…”

“Sartre said that hell is other people,” Glenn says with a gentle smile. He adds, “Muggle philosopher,” for Ron, who looks confused.

“And he says this why?” Ginny asks, her lips twitching. “Not that I’m arguing.”

“Because other people don’t allow us the delusions that we need in order to live with ourselves,” Malfoy says quietly, then gets up, folding his napkin. “Shall I ‘accidentally’ drop the cake on the floor now?”

“Please do,” Hermione says, and a few minutes later, people are putting on coats and saying thank you and fleeing desperately into the evening air. When it’s just the three of them hovering by the half-open front door, Hermione catches Harry’s sleeve.

“Harry,” she says, looking pinched.

“Hermione,” Harry intones, hoping it’s clear that she’s in trouble and is not to be trusted. Judging from her flinch, she knows, and he softens immediately, unable to be angry. It has been an excruciating evening, but no actual blood has been spilled, so things definitely could’ve been worse.

“I thought—” She breaks off, takes a breath. “You’ve been so unhappy. And he’s…lonely.”

Harry blinks, barely seeing the horrified expression on Ron’s face.

“Were you fixing them up?” Ron hisses.

“No!” Her cheeks flush bright pink. “Well, yes, maybe.”

“This was a fix-up,” Harry repeats, and all of his tension comes flooding back. “Between me and…Malfoy.”

“I thought with more people here it would be less obvious, less uncomfortable. Maybe you could relax, get a chance to see each other as adults, as people who have children who really like each other. I thought…at the very least, maybe you could be _friends._ ”

“Why would we be friends?” Harry asks tightly, his heart pounding sickly in his chest. 

“Friends!” Ron snaps.

“Why not? We’re friends with Malfoy now,” Hermione snaps back at her husband.

When Ron makes a wordless squawk of denial, Hermione adds, “You laugh at his jokes, Ronald! You asked him for advice about investments last week! At least have the courage to admit that you’re friendly with him.”

Ron aims a guilty glance at Harry, and Harry says, “I don’t care, really. You can be friends with him if you want to. I’m fine with it.”

“Because clearly you’re over the past,” Hermione says to him in a rather barbed way, considering her own sins lately. “That’s why you said three words all night and stared daggers through our carpet. I really did think that maybe the two of you could have—”

Then Ron blusters, triumphantly, “Harry’s not even gay!”

At this point Hermione gives him a sharp look that clearly says _oh, please,_ but Harry lets that go because his gay status is the least of his problems. Hermione’s always seen him more clearly than he sees himself, and she’s clearly seen that he prefers men now, something he hasn’t mentioned even once, so maybe she’s seen more than that, maybe she suspects that there’s something rotten in Harry, something dark and sadistic, something reminiscent of Voldemort or Lucius Malfoy or Dolores Umbridge, something unforgivable and indecent and freakish, and he can’t imagine the shame and hurt of her knowing, of anyone knowing what he is, he just can’t, and before he knows it, he’s blathering, “Why would we—that could never happen, there’s nothing that we, it’s-it’s Malfoy, Hermione, what the fuck were you thinking? It’s disgusting, there’s no…he’s…it’s fucking disgusting, why would you think I could ever want anything to do with—”

There’s a soft clearing of a throat, and Harry slams his eyes closed as the screen door opens once more.

“Forgot my umbrella,” Malfoy says, voice blank, and then Hermione whispers, “Oh, Draco, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, Granger,” Malfoy says. Harry doesn’t dare look at him. “I knew where I stood. Good night.”

Harry waits twenty seconds for Malfoy to clear out, barely breathing under the crushing weight in his chest, then thumps Ron on the shoulder to get rid of the horrible misery on his face, kisses Hermione on the forehead to offset the tears in her eyes, and leaves without another word.

*

Harry’s sort of used to feeling like a yo-yo these days—extreme highs in the days immediately before his evenings with Malfoy, and an electric sensation of life that runs through him whenever he thinks about it, and extreme lows in the hours immediately after his times with Malfoy—but this is so blatant that even he can’t miss it.

Funny that after all this time spent trying to hide the way he hurts Malfoy with his fists, he manages to hurt Malfoy in front of his best friends far more efficiently with his words. And he knows it’s more efficient, because Malfoy doesn’t come back.

Harry goes to sleep each night hearing that awful, resigned comment over and over. _I knew where I stood._

Because Malfoy’s resigned to Harry treating him like shit, clearly, and not in any of the scenes they’ve done together. It’s in Harry’s casual disregard of Malfoy’s worth, in his determination to see this whole thing between them as filthy.

It’s not until Malfoy doesn’t turn up for more than two weeks, however, that Harry figures out that this crawling, vicious knot in his gut is more than just his usual guilt at being a fucking lousy human being. It’s also an acute longing.

He tries to tell himself first that it’s the sex he misses. Or the pain.

But the thought of going to the club and finding someone else to fuck makes him deeply uncomfortable.

Even if he were able to get past this bizarre—and surely unnecessary—need to be somehow faithful to his…whatever Malfoy is, Harry suspects that the sex would be unsatisfying anyway. How could it be anything but a substitution? There’s history with Malfoy. There’s a present and a past and a future (although he has no idea what it entails). Their lives are linked—through events beyond their control, through chance, through their own mistakes and a series of bad choices.  Malfoy’s submission isn’t available to any man with a strong hand in a sex club. It’s more than that—his every tear is a hard-earned prize, his bowed head a gift, his submission a weighted thing built of a thousand small cruelties and histories. When Malfoy submits to Harry, he’s offering more than his body, Harry sees that now.

It’s enough that he misses Malfoy when he doesn’t show up.

It’s enough that he’s grateful when Malfoy doesn’t show up. Grateful that Malfoy has finally learned to say that he’s had enough of Harry’s abuse, because Harry’s beginning to realize that he’ll never be able to say no.

Malfoy deserves someone who will hurt him without hurting him. Harry doesn’t deserve his trust.

*

Hogwarts lets out around then for summer, and suddenly there’s noise in Harry’s life again, noise from a source other than Malfoy. He gets a few days with his children before they’ll go back to Ginny and Glenn’s, and he listens avidly as James describes the Quidditch Cup final in great detail, as Al explains about his trials with Herbology, having inherited his mother’s black thumb. Lily’s first year was a success as well, earning her top marks and the praise of her teachers.

Harry’s missed them—the brightest part of his life for years—and yet, sitting there with Lily squashed against him and James’s voice loud with excitement, he can’t help being aware of an emptiness.

He forces himself to smile and laugh, but he’s not sure they believe it. He sure as fuck doesn’t.

*

In the ringing silence that is Malfoy’s third week of absence, Harry accepts a dinner invite to Ron’s house for the weekend with the strict requirement that there be no other guests besides them and the kids. They eat in rambunctious noise, and Harry waves off Hermione’s conflicted apology-slash-lecture about the dinner party.

“I didn’t mean to humiliate him like that,” Harry admits into his pie. “I mean, I never would’ve said those things if I knew he was there—”

“Oh, Harry, I know.” She reaches out and pats his hand.

She seems willing to listen to more, and he considers it, very briefly, maybe mentioning that they’ve been fucking but leaving out the nature of it entirely, and he’s taken aback by how badly he wants to.

But he’s not sure Ron’s past the shock of realizing Harry’s interested in men, and considering his reaction to Glenn, Harry doesn’t want to take the risk of poisoning Ron and Malfoy’s friendship before his mate’s had a little more time to adjust. So he says something to Hermione about her latest work project instead, and she switch topics easily.

A little over an hour later, he goes upstairs to collect his children and finds Hugo alone in his bedroom, making notes about something he’s reading in a book.

“All right, Hugo?” Harry asks.                                                                

“Yes,” the boy says, lifting his head and marking his place with one finger. He doesn’t seem upset to be in here alone while all the other children make an enormous amount of noise in Rose’s bedroom. “Just studying.”

“I hate to break it to you, but it’s summertime now,” Harry says. “You’re allowed to tell the books off and do something fun, you know.”

Hugo nods. “I just wanted to make sure I got this technique down before taking a break for the next few months. It’s part of what Scorpius taught me. I re-write what I’m reading as I go, putting it into my own words. Helps me tell just where I’m getting stuck.”

“Ah.” Harry hesitates, then steps inside. “I’ve been meaning to say…your parents mentioned how much better you’ve been doing. I’m very happy for you.”

“Thanks,” Hugo replies. He quirks his mouth, then adds earnestly, “You know, I feel sort of dumb about it, actually.”

“Hey,” Harry says sharply. “Struggling with one subject does not make you dumb.”

“Not about that, Uncle Harry,” Hugo says, rolling his eyes. “I mean because I got so mad about not being able to do magic like everyone else. I guess I was scared, too, that people would think things about me for having to learn things different.”

Harry’s knees give a little quake, and he only barely manages to say, “Oh?”

“Yeah. But no one seems to care much—well, except for Roger Johnson, but he eats paper when he thinks people aren’t looking, so I just tell him to shut it. Anyway, no one who I _like_ cares that I have to transfigure things a different way. And it’s loads better now than it was when I was pretending everything was okay.”

Harry swallows hard. It’s a little embarrassing to have a thirteen-year-old speak so casually about realizations that a nearly forty-year-old man has been struggling with for months. “You’re happy, then?”

“Yeah,” Hugo says. Then he frowns, tapping his quill against the desk surface, splattering little droplets of ink. “Not that this isn’t, you know, great and all, Uncle Harry, but you’ve never talked to me about school this much. Is this about my self-esteem? Because I already told mom that my self-esteem is fine. I have so much self-esteem for myself I’ve got to store the extra in my closet.”

Harry grins. “Yeah. Just…you’re pretty damn smart, Hugo.”

“Sheesh, I know.”

“Smarter than me.”

“I _know_.”

Harry laughs, and goes to find his children.

*

He goes back online and buys all the same books as before.

This time, he reads them for what they actually say and not what he hopes they’ll say.

He reads about things like safe words and how dangerous it is to leave someone bound alone in a room like Harry does with Malfoy at the end of some of their sessions—which explains the looks that the girl in the hallway gives him. He reads about subspace and safe, sane, and consensual play.

He reads about struggles that other Doms and subs have had trying to reconcile what they like with what they think they should like. He reads about limits and negotiating. He reads about something called aftercare.

All things meant to make sure that the pain stays where they want it.

He wonders why Malfoy hasn’t mentioned any of them.

He makes plans, just in case. Looking for a way to show that even if Harry isn’t entirely okay with what they do yet, he’s okay with _Malfoy._ A way to say that their troubled history only enriches where they are now.

He thinks about going to the Manor to tell Malfoy about some of the things he’s been thinking, but it feels disrespectful somehow. Malfoy doesn’t have many ways to protect himself from Harry. He should be allowed to retreat to someplace safe. So Harry resigns himself to waiting.

*

It’s another week and a half before Malfoy comes by again, and when he does show, he’s clearly determined to pretend that the awful dinner—and the lack of contact afterwards—never happened. He’s also nervy as hell, jogging his weight from one leg to the other, his eyes glancing off of Harry’s every few seconds.

It could not be plainer that Malfoy is only here because he’s hard up.

Harry doesn’t complain. If he’s Malfoy’s last choice in the whole world, he’ll take it, because the relief of seeing him again makes Harry’s knees quake.

Harry sets up the most conservative scene they’ve done. He restrains Malfoy, but doesn’t hurt him. Doesn’t humiliate him. Doesn’t speak to him while they’re fucking, no dirty talk, no orders; he’s said enough already.

Harry’s never been so aware of the effects of his words.

Afterwards, Harry hovers in the doorway with a vague idea of apologizing for the things he said at the dinner or maybe walking Malfoy out. Malfoy is unmarked; he’s moving easily as he pulls his clothes on, and while Harry can admire his grace, he’s dismayed by all that pristine, unowned skin.

When Malfoy’s ready to go, he pauses next to Harry and looks at him, really looks at him, for the first time all night.

“Don’t ever treat me like a victim again, or it’ll be the last time we do this,” he says. He leaves. Harry lets him.

*

Things go back to normal after that. Well, semi-normal.

Harry’s so relieved to have Malfoy back that he can’t find his guilt about what he’s doing. He’s so grateful for a chance to demonstrate that Malfoy can trust him that he can’t pretend to care what it makes him.

Somewhere in there, his priorities shift.

*

A few weeks later, Harry gets up the nerve to ask, “Did Astoria know about what you like?”

Malfoy’s on the couch, catching his breath, letting his thigh muscles recover—it’s hard to hold a squat for that long while keeping a toy inside, but he’d done it. Because Harry had requested it.

“Why do you think she left?” Malfoy says. He wipes sweat off his brow, lips turned downwards. “She was supposed to be out of town. She caught me with a man. She told me I was a disgusting pervert and that if I fought her on anything she wanted in the divorce she’d reveal that she found me with a horsetail stuck up my arse and a bit in my mouth.”

“Merlin,” Harry says. “Hell hath no fury, I suppose.”

“I don’t blame her for going,” Malfoy says. “I cheated. We weren’t in love, not even in the beginning, but it was a marriage nonetheless. I owed her fidelity.”

“She doesn’t see Scorpius though?”

“ _That_ I blame her for.” Malfoy clears his throat. “If I’d known she would do that, I’d have decimated her in the divorce and let her tell the press any damn fool thing she liked.”

Harry studies Malfoy’s pale profile. “You’re a good father, aren’t you, Malfoy?”

Those cheeks flush pink. “We’re done, right? For the night, I mean?”

Harry sighs. “Yeah, you can go.”

*

On the day that Harry accidentally breaks the skin on Malfoy’s back during a tough whipping, he doesn’t realize that he’s actually _fainted_ until he opens his eyes and finds Malfoy hovering worriedly over him, a glass of water in his hand. When he sits up a few minutes later, Harry realizes that the girl from the hallway is standing by the door, watching them.

Malfoy had been restrained; he must’ve yelled for help.

Harry’s still dizzy when the girl leaves, apparently convinced that all is well. He’s dimly aware of Malfoy wiping sweat off of his face with a towel.

“You don’t have to feel guilty,” Malfoy says quietly. “I’m all right. Accidents happen. It doesn’t make you a monster.”

 _I hurt you,_ Harry thinks but doesn’t say, because it doesn’t make sense. He always hurts Malfoy. That’s the point.

But not like this.

Malfoy’s hand is shaking as it brushes back Harry’s fringe, his fingertips lingering almost tenderly on his temple before Harry opens his eyes and Malfoy jerks away.

Harry doesn’t know why it’s different—shedding a little blood, barely more than a paper cut, is far less dramatic than the many bruises he’s produced—but it is. Maybe because Malfoy had never said that Harry could take it that far. Maybe because Harry had simply assumed that blood would have to be an automatic red light, and hadn’t thought to ask for clarity about what Malfoy wants. Maybe because Malfoy still hadn’t said _stop_.

*

“Why books?” Harry asks.

Malfoy gives him a look that clearly says _now? You’re asking me this now?_

“Why books?” Harry asks again, tugging on the chain linking the nipple clamps and the cock ring Malfoy’s wearing. He’s been hard for ages while Harry plays with him. Harry’s never used this particular vibrator on him before; it’s got Malfoy sweaty and mumbling and slightly bad-tempered.

“Because they aren’t arseholes,” Malfoy snaps, and Harry clucks his tongue, shakes his head, and flicks the switch again. Malfoy’s body jerks, his legs tense like he wants to draw them up, but the ties around his ankles keep him stretched out. When Malfoy looks like he’s getting close, Harry turns the vibration off.

“Care to try again?” Harry asks.

Malfoy’s panting. He seems to have lost the last of his resistance, and when Harry reaches up to grip his chin and lift his face, Malfoy presses his cheek into Harry’s palm. It’s entirely docile, and Harry’s chest can’t possibly contain the warmth he feels in response.

There can’t be anything that wrong with Harry, not if Malfoy can grant him such sweetness.

“People who love books talk to other people who love books,” Malfoy says hesitantly, softly, “After the war, it was a way to…I didn’t have anyone to talk to, Potter. No one who knew me. And I didn’t know how to talk to Muggles. But I knew how to talk about books.”

Later, when Harry lets him go, Malfoy says, “That wasn’t fair. Asking when I couldn’t say no.”

“Are you telling me not to do it again?” Harry asks, because he abruptly realizes that Malfoy’s right. He shouldn’t ask for things Malfoy might not otherwise want to give, not when Malfoy’s defenses are low.

Malfoy hesitates. “I’m saying it was unfair.”

Harry tries to read his expression, but Malfoy only ducks away. “Never mind,” he says. “It was fine, really. Do whatever you want.”

*

Harry double-checks with his books, but everything he reads says that taking a sub to a point where he safe words, if handled appropriately, isn’t damaging in the long run. In healthy relationships, the occasional need to safe word isn’t a sign of failure at all, but of faith in the strength of the relationship. It can, in fact, lead to discussions that produce more rewarding, fulfilling scenes in the future, and if the Dom is responsive and caring enough afterwards, can lead to a better bond between players, as the sub’s trust in the Dom’s respect for limits is renewed.

He doesn’t want to break Malfoy, exactly. It’s more that he wants to prove that Malfoy can trust him, that Harry does care enough to stop, that Malfoy’s more than a willing body to him. If he can do that in a scene, somehow, then that’s preferable. But he does want to get under Malfoy’s skin, get past the barriers to the vulnerable place underneath, where he hopes his message will be heard. And just in case things become too intense, it’s a comfort to know that Harry can turn Malfoy’s safe word into something that strengthens them.

He tries to think of something that will show Malfoy that this is about them now. That no one else will do. That Harry accepts everything Malfoy is, and was, and will be, without disgust.

*

The next time they’re in the small room, Harry leans against the door and watches as Malfoy gets undressed. He’s nicely built, Malfoy is, with long limbs and pale skin and an excruciatingly lovely arse. It’s a subjective beauty these days, Harry can admit it. He would find everything about Malfoy striking now even if the man _weren’t_ certifiably attractive. Because he’s Malfoy, and Malfoy is Harry’s.

Harry’s going to keep him, and since possession’s 9/10ths of the law, he figures he’s got a pretty good head start.

Doesn’t mean he’s not nervous.

“I want you to choose a safe word,” Harry says.

Malfoy's hands pause on his buttons briefly. He turns his head slightly, eyes narrowing, and says, “And how do we know about those?”

“I can read, you know,” Harry says impatiently. “So pick one.”

“No.”

“We’re not starting until you do.”

“Are you about to fuck this up for me?” Malfoy asks.

“Just pick a word that tells me to stop, will you?”

 “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t have the sac to go far enough that I’ll need it. Potter, you walked out on me in the alley with your brain in a knot and apologies dribbling all over the place, and that was the equivalent of Binns’ class for me. The closest we’ve ever come was that time when you helped me put on my socks…”

“And I wrecked you.”

“In the best possible way,” Malfoy says, but he’s stiff and looking away, and Harry remembers the way Malfoy’s ankle bone had felt beneath his thumb as Malfoy promised to wear his marks.

“You looked sad afterwards,” Harry says.

Malfoy doesn’t say anything for a minute, removing his wallet from his trousers thoughtfully, and then opening his belt with slow fingers. “I was,” he admits. “But not about the sex.”

“Then what?”

“No,” Malfoy says briskly. “That’s private, and it’s not part of what we do here. We fuck. That’s it. So can we get started already?”

Harry swallows his frustration, because he already knew that he’d damaged that tentative…whatever it was that sprang up between them that time when Malfoy had agreed to wear his marks, and this clearly isn’t making it better. But he’s done doing this haphazardly. He won’t take risks with Malfoy anymore, not real ones. “Yes, we can start. Once you pick something.”

“I don’t need a safe word.”

“ _Pick one.”_

“Snape,” Malfoy says snottily, licking his lips and smiling widely. “Although I’m not going to use it.”

Little fucker. Harry grits his teeth. “Well, now you’ve got it if you want it.”

“Alrighty, boss,” Malfoy says, with such fake verve that Harry’s torn between hitting him for being disrespectful and laughing.

“You didn’t mention aftercare either.”

There’s a tiny hesitation. “Aftercare is for people who reach their limits. That’s not a problem for me. See the above, re: you suck.”

Harry hits him. It’s a pointedly careful blow—Harry’s never actually hit him out of anger since that first night in the alley. It’s not all that hard, either, because he doesn’t want to leave a bruise that Malfoy will be forced to heal so as not to scare his son, but it makes his point. Malfoy’s cheek blooms bright red, his eyes sink half-closed, and his breath leaves him in a rush. “Such rebellion,” Harry murmurs. “It’s almost like you want me to put you in your place.”

Harry steps closer, reaches down, and strokes Malfoy’s already-hardening cock through the thin pants. There’s something highly erotic about being fully dressed when Malfoy’s nearly naked. He takes a moment to hope that he’s doing the right thing.

“Sometimes I wonder what you would’ve done back at Hogwarts if I’d just laid into you when you started running your mouth. Would you have been shocked? Or just grateful?”

Malfoy doesn’t answer.

“You would’ve let me, wouldn’t you?” Harry asks, stepping closer so he can whisper directly into the pink-tinged shell of Malfoy’s ear. “Can you picture it? I can. We’re on the Quidditch pitch. We’re walking out, match’s about to start, and all you’re doing is running your mouth about how great the Slytherin team is and how much Harry Potter sucks and this time I…just…snap.”

He’s close enough to see the swift thudding of Malfoy’s pulse beneath the porcelain skin. “I grab your arm and shove you down right there on the grass in front of everyone. Your team, my team, the people in the stands, the teachers. Maybe even a few parents. I know what you’d do here and now—you’d take it.”

To demonstrate, Harry throws Malfoy abruptly to the floor, and Malfoy’s eyes fly open, his breath catching, but Harry’s right: he does just take it. He lies there without complaint.

“Back then, though, I think you would’ve fought.” Harry crouches over him. “Imagine the humiliation of it, Malfoy.” With one hand, he reaches down, tenderly brushes a strand of white-blond hair aside. Malfoy’s gaze jerks to meet his, hard to read, and then he slowly nods.

“I’d have fought,” he says quietly.

“Why?”

Malfoy shrugs. “Pride, probably.”

“You never did like to lose.”

“Does anyone?”

Harry licks his lips. “Fight now, Malfoy. Fight like you would’ve back then.”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Malfoy says, looking confused. “I don’t…it’s not…” His cheeks are flushed with embarrassment. “I-I want to submit, not fight.” He clears his throat even as his ears turn blood red. He speaks very softly now. “I want to give you what you want. You don’t have to make me anymore.”

“I know. Do it because I told you to. Do it because I can’t stop thinking about all those people watching me fuck you even while you’re trying to get away. Do it because it’ll make me hard.”

Malfoy studies him for a long second. Harry gazes back evenly, then says, “You can safe word at any time. No judgment.”

Something in Malfoy’s eyes goes cold. He swings at Harry, his fist crashing into Harry’s jaw with impressive speed and strength, and that’s when Harry knows that Malfoy had let him win in that alley all those months ago. He’d let Harry beat him, lost on purpose to manipulate Harry into giving him what he wanted.

This legitimately pisses Harry off and he tackles Malfoy to the ground.

He’s forced to work for it, really work for it, because Malfoy’s not holding back. Harry takes more than a few decent shots to the face and belly as they writhe and struggle across the floor, their knees and elbows only barely protected by the cushioning charm on the hardwood, and it’s only his weight and leverage that keeps him on top, because for the first time, Harry can tell he’s pushed Malfoy to that basic, fundamental place that he found so easily all the time when they were children.

When he finally has Malfoy’s arms up over his head, Malfoy tries to bite him. Harry lifts his head out of reach and says, “Are you thinking about them watching us? Can’t you feel every eye on you? Watching me overpower you?”

Malfoy’s eyes slam closed and his back arches helplessly in response, but a moment later he recovers and does as Harry’s told him to do—he fights back, planting one foot and shoving in an attempt to roll Harry off.

Harry shifts as though Malfoy’s going to succeed in knocking him off, but halfway through the move, he simply lifts his hips, and Malfoy ends up on his belly with Harry sitting on his arse. He’s gotten an arm free, but Harry catches it quickly.

“They’d probably be whispering about you by now. Making fun. Saying, ‘oh, looks like young Malfoy just isn’t any kind of a match for Harry Potter.’”

“Fuck you,” Malfoy grits out, and struggles some more. Harry’s out of breath, and this is-this is excellent. All the times he imagined putting Malfoy in his place back in school, and it was never like this. He’s hard enough to drive nails. And no small part of it is because it feels right on another level too. Because this time, for the first time, he’ll be able to soothe the hurt they inflict on each other afterwards.

He eases back, shoves first one, and then the other booted foot between Malfoy’s bare thighs, drives them open, creating space for himself there. He wrenches Malfoy’s arms down so they’re locked behind his back; it gives Harry more space to move, more leverage to keep him in place one-handed.

With his other hand, he takes hold of Malfoy’s silk briefs and yanks hard. The fabric tears and Malfoy’s bare-arsed beneath him, flanks quivering.

“You’re naked in front of them, Malfoy. They’re all looking at you, and they all know what I’m about to do.”

Malfoy’s body flails with what might be real panic for a second, and Harry pauses, waiting for the safe word, lifting his eyebrows when it doesn’t come.

“You’ve lost,” he says, still waiting. “You’ve been beaten by Harry Potter, and now he’s going to fuck you in front of all these people who just want to see you get what’s coming to you. They know I’m making you my bitch, Malfoy. I’m making you mine.”

Malfoy moans—a soft, aching sound, but says nothing.

So Harry wraps an arm around Malfoy’s hips and tugs, even as he keeps his weight on Malfoy’s wrists where they’re locked in the middle of his back. He’s got his arse in the air now, face on the floor, and Harry uses his knees to spread those white thighs painfully wide.

Malfoy’s beautiful like this—trembling and helpless and angry.

Harry opens his jeans. The safe word will come. It has to. Malfoy’s never let Harry fuck him dry before—well, Harry hasn’t tried. It sounds painful for both of them, actually, so even as he lines up (and Merlin, he’s hard, he’s so damn hard, because he can picture a couple hundred pairs of eyes watching them, can feel the triumph of having Malfoy spread open like this for him) he’s expecting to stop any second. There’s no prep and no lube—Malfoy would have to be fucking insane not to safe word.

But he doesn’t. His body heaves and pitches and struggles, but his mouth stays resolutely shut. Harry presses like he’ll keep going and Malfoy only exhales, hard, making an obvious effort to relax, and Harry’s tempted, he’s so fucking tempted to just do it.

“You can stop this if you want to,” he says.

“No,” Malfoy grits out.

Harry shakes him, hard. “You can,” he says again. He barely sounds like himself. His hips want to plunge, want to make Malfoy feel everything. _Give me what I want,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t even know what that entails anymore.

“Fuck you,” Malfoy says, and Harry can only shake his head in amazement at just how fucked up he’s let this get.

“I’ll do it,” Harry warns him quietly. “If you don’t safe word, I’ve got to think you want me to. I’m _trusting_ you, Malfoy, to safe word if you want me to. Sex, not violence, remember? Don’t you dare just let me misunderstand.”

Malfoy’s body jerks, a shiver racing along his spine, and then he says, “You’re such a fucking pussy.”

Harry laughs, even as his grip tightens enough to bend bones. But he can’t fuck him dry, he just can’t—there are overtones to that which Harry can’t reconcile. So he pulls back enough to spit on Malfoy’s arsehole, a thick glob of wetness. “Imagine Crabbe and Goyle seeing me do that to you. Imagine your _father_ seeing it.”

Malfoy shudders. And says _nothing._

Harry presses his cock in. He isn’t rough, but he isn’t gentle, either. The clutch of Malfoy’s body is furnace-hot, but it’s uncomfortable rather than pleasurable because there’s far too much friction even with the spit, but there’s something incredibly…oh, Merlin, it’s _good_. It’s base and forbidden and wrong to want this, but he does, and it’s so very, very good. To hear Malfoy’s strangled scream and the way his body scrambles to get loose even though he still doesn’t safe word. To feel his flesh yield to Harry’s helplessly, to know that Harry can hurt Malfoy like this and feel this powerful, this masterful. To know that Malfoy will let him. Malfoy wants him to.

“Everyone on that Quidditch field is watching me fuck you,” he says, and Malfoy moans. He pushes back onto Harry’s cock a tiny bit, thighs widening further still. “They’re watching you take it, like this, like the little cunt that you are.”

And Malfoy does take it. He’s acquiescing from spine to hip, going liquid as Harry thrusts, opening himself, wanting it. The supremacy Harry feels in response is maddening. Harry can say or do anything he wants. Anything he wants.

And he wants Malfoy. He fucks Malfoy hard, the spit evaporating so that it’s dry and uncomfortable and even painful, the skin of his cock feeling raw, and he can only imagine how it feels for Malfoy, but that only contributes to the wildfire in his brain.

Anything he wants. He lets go of Malfoy’s wrists and uses his weight to push those pale, narrow shoulders onto the floor, ramming into Malfoy over and over, forcing a deep arch into that lean back, and he can hear himself speaking.

“Give it to me,” he demands. “Are you thinking about them, Malfoy? All those people who are watching, who know what you are? They know you’re a scared little Slytherin bully who needs to be taught a lesson, so here I am. You like that? The idea that they’re watching you get fucked by Harry Potter, watching you spread and take it like a whore?”

Malfoy’s moving with him now, breathing in rough sobs, his fingers pressed so hard against the floor that the nailbeds have turned white. “Look at you.” Harry growls. “You fucking love it, don’t you? They’re laughing, Malfoy, laughing at how desperate you are to give it up to me, and—” Malfoy pushes back onto him harder at this point, gasping, “—and you just lie here with your arse open and in the air. Fuck, you’re a filthy bitch. You’d let me fuck you in front of a whole crowd, wouldn’t you? You’d let me do anything I want. Me, and no one else.”

“Yes,” Malfoy gasps raggedly. “Anything.”

Harry comes hard, pounding Malfoy so viciously they slide forward on the floor a little. He pulls out and lets Malfoy go, and the other man collapses onto his belly with a groan.

“Get on your knees,” Harry says.

Malfoy does, although it’s a graceless, exhausted maneuver. He’s hard and dripping. Harry goes to stand beside him.

“If you want to come, you’ll have to do it like this. Like you would if you were actually on that Quidditch pitch. Rub up against my leg like you’re my dog, Malfoy, if you want it. Show all of them how devoted you are now. Show me how devoted you are.”

Malfoy blinks up at him. A minute passes while they gaze at each other.

Then Malfoy slides over, his shoulders rounded, his eyes dropping, and slowly, tentatively, presses his crotch against Harry’s calf. He begins to move, hips rocking, and while he seems humiliated and ashamed, pre-come is already dampening Harry’s jeans. He’s moving quickly, rutting wildly, and Harry takes up a handful of his hair, wrenching his head back so he can watch. Malfoy’s face is flushed with color, his eyes clenched tightly, his mouth open and gasping, his pink tongue flicking out to lick his lips, and his whole body undulates. The humiliation stays, but the shame flees, leaving him demure and submissive and eager. He touches Malfoy’s chin and forehead softly.

Harry says, “Look at me,” and Malfoy does, gray eyes needy and almost blind. He’s beautiful like this.

“Does it turn you on to think of everyone watching you do this?” Harry asks. “Watching you hump my leg like an animal?”

Malfoy nods, body still working, and Harry runs his thumb along the corner of that pretty mouth.

“You’re so beautiful,” Harry says softly. “So giving. I could watch you forever, Malfoy. Come. Come for me.”

And Malfoy obeys, shooting in warm pulses over Harry’s leg, and giving a long, low moan of pleasure and something else, something that might be despair, and Harry has to move quickly to catch that pale body because Malfoy’s crumpling.

He manages to keep Malfoy from cracking his skull on the floor. This is the most important part, he knows. The part where Harry puts him back together and shows him.

“That was good,” he says softly. “That was good, Malfoy.” Harry runs a hand along the undefended nape of Malfoy’s neck. “You’re so good. I’m proud of you.”

But Malfoy’s shaking and pulling away, leaving Harry feeling cold. They’re quiet for a long time while Malfoy recovers, sitting gingerly on the floor several feet away while Harry lies on his back and wonders if Malfoy let him cross a line after all, or if maybe Malfoy got the message loud and clear but doesn’t want Harry to take care of him that way. Malfoy gets stiffly to his feet. Harry sits up, but stays on the floor. He wants to tell Malfoy to come back, to lie back down.

“You’re getting better at this,” Malfoy says, getting dressed.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Harry asks, because that’s the opposite of what Harry would’ve said. He’s pretty sure all his plans were for nothing, that this was just one more fuck-up. He uses his wand to clear up Malfoy’s come from his jeans. “Hurting you more?”

Malfoy doesn’t look at him. “Hurting me better.”

Harry pauses.

“Your aim’s improved, that’s all,” Malfoy says.

Harry can’t read his tone. He sounds like he’s trying to be blank, but there’s a tiny thread of anger underneath. Harry can’t tell if Malfoy’s pleased with this development of ‘better’ pain, but he’s inclined to think not.

“So this was a punishment too?”

Harry pauses again. “Why would I want to punish—”

“It’s obvious what you think. I did this to you, didn’t I? I infected you with my filth.”

Harry feels at a loss. Malfoy still won’t look at him, and he’s left bereft. He not only failed in taking Malfoy to a point where Harry can show that he _is_ over the past, that he doesn’t find Malfoy disgusting at all, he’s hurt Malfoy in a way that has nothing to do with sex _again._

“I don’t think you’re filthy,” Harry says, in what he hopes is a convincingly firm voice. “I think I’m an absolutely horrid person for taking advantage of you this whole time, and I don’t want to do that anymore. This thing, between us, the way you want it? It’s wrong.”

It has been from the start, but not because of the way Harry hurts him and Malfoy likes it. It’s wrong because Harry’s been using Malfoy. And it’s wrong because Malfoy let him.

And despite Harry’s misunderstanding in the beginning, it _is_ sex, and has been all along. Not violence. And their sex has been empty. Until now, although he suspects there’s a meaning here that he didn’t intend, something coming from Malfoy that he couldn’t have predicted.

“I know what’s wrong with me,” Malfoy says. “It has nothing to do with what I like in bed. And everything to do with what I’ll put up with to get what I like in bed.” He sits down on the low sofa in the corner, face still averted. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Could you go?”

Harry has to bite back the urge to go over to him, maybe play with the fine strands of blond hair the way his son had played with Scorpius’s hair that day in the shop. He wants to ease Malfoy somehow, which is impossible when Malfoy doesn’t want to let him.

“Yeah,” he says roughly, doing the only thing for Malfoy that Malfoy will let him do. “I’ll go.”

*

He walks blindly for a while in the mild July night, until suddenly everything seems like too much. He ducks into an alley, then hits the wall several times in a fury, breaking a bone in his hand, wondering how it is that he could finally start to come to terms with what he wants—Malfoy, begging, Malfoy, humiliated, Malfoy, writhing in pain, Malfoy, safe and warm and willing to let Harry be sweet with him afterwards—only to ruin it all.

The pain radiates up his arm, and he catches his breath, feeling sick, and suddenly he’s walking back the way he came, walking quickly, needing to catch Malfoy before he goes. He pushes through the crowd and the music, clatters down the stairs and past the girl at the small desk, and back into the room they’d used.

It's empty. Damn it.

“I’m glad you’re back,” says a feminine voice, and Harry turns around to see the girl a couple of feet away. She has long, straight brown hair and delicate features, and there’s something almost childlike about her, except for the hard edge in her eyes. She is not a sub, Harry realizes.

“Huh?” he asks. “Glad?”

“I’d planned on calling,” she says, “but you don’t have a phone number listed on your membership form.”

“Oh,” Harry says. He doesn’t have a phone, doesn’t need one. He wonders how long ago Malfoy left. “No, I didn’t put one down. Why? What did you need?”

She lifts her chin. “We’re revoking your membership, Mr. Potter.”

“What? Why?” he asks, because even though he knows why—the whole shitty Dom thing, and he supposes he can’t blame them—he’s confused about why _now._

“We’re aware that there is a great deal of individualization in relationships and that each couple should and will define their limits as they like, but we here at _Nacht Wünsche_ feel that you have engaged in abusive practices at our property, and we have strict rules about preventing that sort of behavior. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope that you’ll—”

“Wait,” Harry says, at a loss, wondering what she could have seen that would make her come to that conclusion. Not that it hasn’t been true, perhaps, especially back in the beginning, but he’s simply confused about the logistics of it and how she’s come to this decision today. “Abusive? You mean that untying him thing I had you doing? Because I didn’t really understand what that meant at first…and besides, I haven’t done that in ages. I’m not…I’m not going to do that anymore. I’d already decided.”

The girl—woman, he sees now—makes a noise that manages to pack a hell of a lot of judgment and anger into a single sound, enough that Harry’s actually a little afraid of her. “It’s not the specific acts, Mr. Potter. It’s a pattern of sessions that have left your submissive in increasingly severe states of subdrop without suitable aftercare. And frankly, I’m tired of watching him leave here flinching at everything and trying not to cry, all right? If you can’t manage to treat someone who loves you with a little more respect, well—you’re not welcome here, all right? That’s not what the scene is about, and you—”

She’s so beyond furious with him that she’s spitting out the words, and Harry says numbly, “Loves me?”

“Oh, _please,”_ she says viciously. “Why do you think he puts up with your bullshit? Did you really not notice that he tore his wrists bloody trying to get to you on the day you collapsed? By the time he I got him uncuffed, he was _frantic_. But of course you didn’t notice.”

Because he’d been nearly unconscious, not because he hadn’t cared, Harry wants to point out, but he gets what she’s saying. In the beginning he wouldn’t have noticed. But he does know one thing for certain—while Malfoy had automatically resumed the practice of letting Harry’s marks heal naturally, there hadn’t been marks on his wrists the time he and Malfoy had played following Harry’s collapse.

Malfoy had healed them. Just those wounds. The ones that hinted at how afraid he’d been for Harry.

She’s still reading him the riot act, but he’s not listening.

_“I know what’s wrong with me. It has nothing to do with what I like in bed. And everything to do with what I’ll put up with to get what I like in bed.”_

Things shift in Harry’s head, pieces falling into place, interactions that suddenly take on new meaning.

Harry is so fucking dumb.

He glances at his hand, dimly listening to her go on about how fragile a sub is after leaving subspace. The knuckles are swollen and aching. He looks up at her, waits until she takes a breath, and says sincerely, “Thank you.”

Then he walks out, leaving her sputtering. Once he’s outside and alone, he aims a couple healing spells at his hand, and even though it’s sore, it’ll do. Then he apparates to Malfoy Manor.

*

When a house elf answers his knock and tells Harry—in very polite, formal terms—to go fuck himself, Harry closes one eye, debates what’ll be most effective, and shouts, “You’re a fucking coward, Malfoy. All that talk about me being a pussy, and you’re the one who broke like a little bitch.”

Then he sits down to wait.

The elf is infuriated at Harry’s treatment of his master, stomping his little foot, hissing things under his breath.

Malfoy comes outside, sees the ruckus, and says, “Kreaky, he’s a guest.” He surveys Harry with eyes both hollow and damp, his skin pale, shoulders hunched. “An arsehole, but a guest.”

“Better an arsehole than a coward,” Harry replies.

“I am not a coward,” he hisses, and shoves Harry with one hand, hard.

“You kind of are,” Harry points out, but without heat, and he catches Malfoy’s wrist and uses it to tow the other man closer. “Why didn’t you just _ask,_ you dumb fuck? Or say something? Tell me off?” He hangs on even when Malfoy struggles to get away, wrapping his arms around Malfoy’s bony hips, and Malfoy’s shouting about how uncouth Harry is, how he will not accept this assault on his person, so Harry grabs a handful of white-blond hair, wrenches Malfoy’s head back, and kisses him.

It starts roughly, meant to subdue, but as soon as Malfoy’s lips tremble open in shock, Harry softens it. He lingers, tasting Malfoy for the first time, finding the richness of Malfoy’s damp mouth incredibly addictive. He slants his head, delving deeper, licking and nibbling and letting one hand stray down to cup Malfoy’s buttocks, stroking gently with one thumb over the round flesh, overjoyed to find that Malfoy’s kissing him back.

He lifts his head just enough to say, “I meant that you were wrong for letting me use you, Malfoy. Not that you were wrong to want me to care.” And then, while Malfoy’s still blinking in astonishment, he takes Malfoy’s mouth again. He owns the kiss, tipping Malfoy’s jaw to the angle he wants, seducing as much as possessing, and Malfoy submits beautifully, even as his whole body shakes and judders, and for all of Harry’s urge to dominate, he doesn’t turn the kiss towards pain or sex.

He keeps it soft. Careful. Loving.

Malfoy abruptly wrenches away, his eyes huge in the yellow light spilling into the night through the open front door, his hand unsteady as he touches his lips tentatively, his whole body tensed against a blow that Harry has no intention of delivering.

Instead, he steps closer, moving to cup Malfoy’s cheek in one hand, about to lower his head again when Malfoy blurts, “Snape.”

Harry inhales sharply. He’s so close, and he wants to push, he wants to _prove_ that it’s different now, but he’s not about to break Malfoy’s trust. That’s the kind of pain he’s never going to willingly cause.

Harry stops. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” Malfoy whispers. “Not from you.”

“You’re still a fucking liar,” Harry says softly. “Why didn’t you tell me about safe words and aftercare, Malfoy?”

“Because I don’t need that shit.”

“Really? Or was it that you thought I wouldn’t be willing? Did you think I’d begrudge you a blanket after I whipped you, Malfoy? Were you afraid I’d stop fucking you if you didn’t let me do whatever I wanted?”

“Fuck you.”

“They kicked me out of the club,” Harry adds, conversationally. “Apparently, I’ve been abusing my sub. The girl there seems to think you’re in love with me.”

Malfoy looks away, towards the dark grounds, a muscle in his jaw working. “She works customer service in a sex club,” Malfoy says finally. “She’s clearly a romantic, the daft bint. That doesn’t mean I’m in love.”

“No,” Harry admits, although he finds Malfoy’s logic—or the lack thereof, rather—fairly revealing. “But it doesn’t mean you aren’t, either. Are you?”

“I barely know you,” Malfoy snaps.

“You know me better than almost anyone. I’ve shared things with you that no one else knows. You’re the mysterious one. You’ve been hiding since day one.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“How many times did you fantasize about me taking you over my knee when we were teenagers?” Harry asks.

“Fuck you!” Malfoy shouts, and this time Harry can see the fear in those big gray eyes.

“How long have you wanted this?” Harry asks.

Malfoy stands there, staring at Harry like he’s ruined something precious, like he’s been utterly betrayed, and tears drip down his cheeks.

“I can see why you thought I’d use it against you in the beginning,” Harry says. He truly does—the way they started, the way Harry had been in the beginning, so twisted up, so horrified…it hadn’t been a bad judgment call on Malfoy’s part. And even at the dinner party, the way Malfoy had been so hopeful, and Harry had been so carelessly cruel out of his own fear and desperation. But Harry’s come a long way since then. “You were probably right—my head was a mess. But it’s different now, I swear it is.”

Malfoy only makes a small, choked sound.

“God, no wonder you thought tonight was a punishment. I wasn’t mocking you, I swear. I was trying to show you…Merlin, I was trying to show you that I see you, I get everything about who you are and who you were, and I’m not leaving.”

Malfoy doesn’t look at him.

Harry asks gently, “How long have you wished for that?”

As Malfoy slowly shakes his head, his mouth soft and scared, his body braced for a blow, a frighteningly sad thought comes to Harry. “Sixth year…did you wish that I’d known, that I’d take you, own you, tell you how to fix it? That I’d give you a way out? Fuck, I’m sorry, Malfoy. I wish I’d _known,_ that I could’ve helped you back—”

Malfoy runs.

After a second of shock, Harry chases him, and then they’re down in the gravel before the front door, Malfoy bucking under him as he attempts to wrench away, and Harry just presses him down.

“Get off me!” Malfoy shrieks. He’s half-mad, writhing wildly, and he catches Harry in the mouth with one pointy elbow.

Harry bellows in pain, but he doesn’t let go. “No more running,” he orders. “Fucking—would you hold—dammit, Malfoy, would you just fucking listen?”

But Malfoy struggles on, and out of nowhere there are house elves popping up out of empty air, protesting in their high voices.

“Please stop, Master Malfoy’s guest!” one of the elves screeches.

A tiny fist pulls Harry’s hair, and he has a moment to think that this is hands down the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to him, and that’s saying something, because he knows Luna Lovegood.

“I’m not hurting him,” Harry barks, trying to elbow the elves away without injuring them. They don’t seem to know what to do; their magic could easily tear him away, but Malfoy had said Harry was a guest, and he’s not correcting that status now.

He’s not telling the elves to kick Harry out, so that’s something.

Harry uses his weight to hold Malfoy still, even though he can feel those lean muscles straining. He presses his lips to Malfoy’s temple. “I’m not going to hurt you anymore,” he murmurs into Malfoy’s ear. “I don’t think you’re disgusting. I don’t hate you. I’m not going to suddenly decide that you’re shit and abandon you. You can say no without being afraid that I’ll leave. But you have to talk to me, you git. You have to be honest or there's no way this can work. I promise not to hurt you on purpose, but I need your help so I don't hurt you by accident. Okay? So would you please call off these gremlins and let me take you inside?”

Malfoy begins to sob. His whole body shudders and he drops his head to the gravel, shoulders heaving, and Harry’s stomach lurches.

“Oh, Malfoy,” he whispers, and runs the fingers of one hand through Malfoy’s hair. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know how you felt. I wouldn’t have…I get it now, okay? And it’s me as well. I do, too.”

For a few minutes, he just holds Malfoy while he cries, trying to avoid the punches and kicks of the elves.

Eventually, one of the elves catches him in a sensitive spot, and Harry yelps, which has one benefit, at least, in that Malfoy’s sobs suddenly stumble into a choking sputter. Malfoy can’t seem to make up his mind whether to cry or laugh at Harry’s misfortune, and from there, it’s only a short stop to long, broken breaths as Malfoy begins to calm down.

“You can stop, Kreaky,” Malfoy says finally. “I’m all right.”

The elves slowly subside, grumbling, and Harry says, “Thank you. Fuck, they’re vicious.”

“Some of them have lived here for decades,” Malfoy says, sounding pedantic, completely congested from the crying, and utterly exhausted at all once. “They’re very loyal.”

“I’ve got the teeth marks to prove it.”

“Can you get off me now?” Malfoy asks.

“Are you going to run?”

“No.”

Harry studies the back of his head for a moment, wary, then decides to trust. He gets up, then helps Malfoy to his feet, brushing at dirt and pebbles while Malfoy wipes his face.

The truth is, Malfoy’s a mess. Hair disheveled, clothes torn and dirty and in disarray, cheeks damp and red, eyes watery. His dignity’s in the toilet, and yet, the vulnerability suits him. He’s sort of lost and young and lovely in this moment. Harry’s reminded once again of the time when he helped Malfoy put his shoes on, and realizes he’s feeling the same way now. A desire to protect. He starts to move, then freezes as a thought occurs to him. “Uh, where’s your kid?”

Malfoy’s lips twist. “At his grandmother’s. He stays over with her on nights when I see you…although it’s a little late to worry about that, don’t you think?”

“Yes, definitely,” Harry agrees. He reaches out, gauging Malfoy’s reaction, and other than a vaguely suspicious glance, there’s no reaction when Harry touches his hand. So he indulges himself by stepping close and swinging Malfoy up into his arms.

Malfoy gives a fairly indecorous squeak and clutches at Harry’s shoulders. “Potter, what the bloody hell are you doing? Put me down.”

“Yeah, sure. In a minute,” Harry says, and carries him inside. It takes Harry a second to get oriented—he hasn’t been here since that awful night all those years ago, and the place looks drastically different now. The furniture is comfortable rather than antique, the decorations friendly and cozy rather than priceless and intimidating, there are books stacked on every surface, and there are signs everywhere that a normal, happy boy lives here—a broom in the entryway, an open package of Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum spilled on a table, a pair of trainers with day-glo orange shoelaces kicked off by a table.

Harry finds a sitting room and wanders in, dropping onto a cushy sofa and keeping Malfoy firmly in his lap the entire time.

“Kreaky, was it?” Harry asks, and Malfoy gives him a bewildered nod. Harry calls, “Kreaky!”

The elf appears, giving Harry a dirty look as he bows. His voice is little more than a growl as he says resentfully, “Yes, sir?”

“Could I get a blanket and a cup of tea for Mr. Malfoy, please? Oh, and a glass of water and some tissues? I’d like to be able to warm him up and take care of him now.”

The elf blinks, then says, far more amiably, “Right away, sir.”

Malfoy’s staring at him, brow knitted, and Harry pulls him closer. Malfoy’s fingers are still clutching Harry’s shirt at his neckline, which is a good sign, he figures. When the elf returns, he helps Harry wrap Malfoy up in the blanket, and sets the tea on the end table well within reach. Harry dips a couple tissues in the water, and then proceeds to wipe up the dirt and tear-tracks on Malfoy’s face.

“We’ll calm down a little here,” he murmurs, “get some tea into you, and then we’ll take a bath. How’s that sound?”

Malfoy swallows, and he seems so small and delicate and afraid to believe that Harry can’t help running his fingers soothingly along that pretty, pink mouth. “Potter, what are you doing?”

“What I should’ve been doing all along. Reminding you that when I hurt you, it’s because we get off on it, not because you’re a bad person or because I don’t care.” He pauses. “I’m not going to kiss you again until you call off the safe word, Malfoy. But you should know that I will. Kiss you, I mean. Once you say I can, I’m going to kiss you a lot.”

Malfoy’s just staring at him, and Harry settles him closer for a proper cuddle. Then he feels something unknot at the core of him as Malfoy says softly, “Okay. You can.”

So Harry does.

He kisses Malfoy deep and long and slow. He kisses Malfoy between sips of tea. He kisses Malfoy as he carries him up the stairs, which leads to a dangerous stumble and a decision to not kiss Malfoy while carrying him upstairs anymore, something that makes Malfoy laugh.

He kisses Malfoy as they talk in low murmurs in the bath, the bubbles and hot water taking away the last of the tension, until Malfoy’s skin is pink and warm and resilient beneath Harry’s questing fingertips.

He kisses Malfoy as he dries him off and carries him to bed, as Harry runs his hands over all that smooth flesh, as Malfoy trembles and begs and moans.

“Do you trust me?” Harry asks, relieved that the craving in his expression is partially concealed in the dim bedroom. Malfoy is finally relaxed and pliable—Harry doesn’t want to spoil that with his own need.

“Yes.”

Harry rewards him with another kiss, wet and lingering.

“Will you let me do anything I want?” Harry whispers.

Malfoy’s lips quirk. “Within limits.”

Harry grins back and gives him another kiss.

“Spread yourself open for me,” Harry orders quietly.

Malfoy shudders and parts his thighs, tipping his head back as Harry coaxes a bruise to the skin of his throat, sucking hard.

“You know what I’d like?” Harry asks, pressing his thumb into the mark as he lifts his head. “I’d like you to be mine all the time, not just when we’re playing. Not like you’re a slave or anything. Just…little things that remind us both of what we are to each other. I’d like you to sit with your legs uncrossed when you’re at home, Malfoy.”

One pale eyebrow goes up. “What? Why?”

“To symbolize that I have access to you at all times,” Harry says. He uses his wand to make lube, then eases his hand down so that he can stretch Malfoy open with gentle fingers. “Sure, you’ll have trousers on, but we’ll know what it means. Every time you move to cross your legs, you’ll have to stop yourself, and remember that you’re not allowed. Remember that you can’t keep me from sliding between your thighs anytime I want to. That you’re here to please me, to be available, any time I want. I’d like that. Do you consent?”

Malfoy’s back arches and his eyelids fall shut as Harry finds his prostate. “Yes,” he moans. “Yes, Harry, fuck, yes. I’ll keep myself open for you.”

“Any time you’re at home,” Harry reminds him. He pulls his hand free, gets into position. “You’re mine to take.”

“All the time,” Malfoy says, and lifts his hips. Harry slides inside him, making Malfoy moan. He moves as if he has all the time in the world, trying to make it last. He gives Malfoy hushed commands, tells him all the ways that Malfoy—Draco, he realizes, it’s _Draco—_ is going to please him, is going to belong to him, and Draco shivers and buries his face in Harry’s throat and holds on with clutching, needy fingers.

“Give yourself to me,” Harry says, and it’s part command, part question, part plea.

“Everything I am,” Draco promises, and this time, he kisses Harry.

*

“You seem different,” Albus says a few days later, stirring the stew.

“Oh?” Harry asks. He begins slicing French bread. He can hear Lily and James arguing in the sitting room, and calls out, “Can someone set the table?”

“You were sad.”

Harry pauses, glancing down at his son. Al’s mouth is shunted off to one side, a thoughtful expression, but childlike, too. “Yes, I suppose I was.”

“Because you missed us?”

Harry manages not to laugh. Ah, the self-involvement of childhood. “There were other things too, but yeah, I always miss you guys when you’re not here.”

“What other things?”

“Grown up things,” Harry says definitively. James runs in, screeches to a halt, and holds his hands out for plates. “You know where the dishes are,” Harry reminds him.

“But my sense of direction is broooken, because I am Garrulous Toast,” James sings, and Harry rolls his eyes.

“He got lost _once,_ ” Lily shouts from the other room. “ _Once._ ”

“Because there are so many misleading roads on a _Quidditch pitch,_ ” James says loudly. “He got lost because he’s stupid.”

“He’s brilliant!” Lily screeches.

“Indoor voices,” Harry says. “And the plates are in the cabinet over there, Mr. Toast.”

James hustles around him, calling to his sister through the doorway, “You realize that even if you get him to marry you it won’t work out, right? Because husbands have to be able to find their wives, and it’s very difficult for Welshmen like Toast to see things that are more than five feet away, even big things like Quidditch stands and Quidditch hoops and, I don’t know, _England.”_

“James, don’t make fun of the Welsh,” Harry intones. “It’s…” He pauses. He doesn’t suppose _racist_ is the right word, and _xenophobic_ doesn’t seem exactly right either, but at the moment he can’t think of what the right word is, so he just says, “It’s bad. Lily, come get glasses, please.”

“You are horrid, James Potter,” Lily says, appearing in the doorway with matching red spots on her cheeks and tears brimming. “You are horrid and I hate you, and he just got lost, it could happen to anyone.”

James takes one look at his sister and all of his awkward fifteen-year-old bullying vanishes. “C’mon, brat, I didn’t mean to be horrid. It’s all right. You can like him even if he’s a dunce.”

“He’s not a dunce,” she argues, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve. Harry winces and resigns himself to doing laundry.

Albus makes an apologetic face. “Sort of is.”

“He accidentally left the country during a match, Lily-bug,” Harry says kindly. He strokes a hand down her hair, giving a strand an affectionate tug. “It’s not a good sign in a keeper. James, plates.”

Lily’s still sniffling as she picks up the glasses and goes back to the dining room.

“Girls are mental, eh, dad?” Al says cheerfully.

“Almost as mental as boys,” Harry agrees.

Harry finishes putting bread in a basket and roots around for the butter.

“So you’re feeling better?” Albus says.

“I am,” Harry replies.

“Did you get a new broom?”

Harry chuckles. He starts to blow it off, then looks down at his son—skinny, young, full of fragile happiness. He doesn’t want Albus to ever feel the way Harry used to: locked in a box, left to suffocate. So afraid of judgment that he was unwilling to even find a compromise on his needs.

This is the part of parenting he finds most rewarding and most terrifying at the same time—the part where he finds himself consciously shaping who his children will be. “I decided I wanted to be happy more than I wanted to be normal.”

“Uh-huh,” Albus says slowly. “But normal’s good.”

Harry blows out a breath, considering. “Look, the rest of us are all Gryffindors, right?”

“Yeah,” Al replies, more quietly.

“So some people might say that it’s weird for you to be in Slytherin.”

“Like Uncle Percy?”

Harry makes a mental note to tell Percy to shut his damn gob, and nods. “Yeah, like Uncle Percy. But that’s only true if you assume that Gryffindor is where everyone should go, and that’s not true, is it?”

“That would be useless,” Albus says, then smiles slyly. “Where would the smart kids go?”

Harry laughs and thumps his son gently on the head. “So the point is that people will always try to tell you what’s normal or what’s right, but you can’t let them dictate what you do or think, because normal is…well, it’s in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?”

Albus mulls this over. “Maybe,” he says finally.

“Good enough,” Harry says dryly. He raises his voice. “Are you lot ready in there?”

“Just need the stew!” Lily calls.

“Dining room,” Al says to himself, lifting the heavy pot of stew.

“It’s just through that door, now, Al,” Harry says. “If you hit Scotland, you’ve gone too far.”

*

Draco on his doorstep in the cold morning air, flawless in a calf-length black coat, silk scarf draped round his neck, an eyebrow arched as if he’s bored, but the flushed cheeks and sweet smile betray the reality. Scorpius is at the bottom of the steps, bouncing in place, arms laden with gifts. He grins and says, “Please say you’re ready to go, Harry, _please_. I’ve been waiting _forever._ ”

“It definitely feels like it’s been forever,” Draco says under his breath, and Harry grins as he locks up.

They’re due for Christmas morning at the Burrow in ten minutes, where they’ll meet up with the rest of Harry’s family. He turns around, looks at the two Malfoys standing in front of him, one calm and wry, the other about to explode with impatience, and thinks that maybe it’s almost time to have the moving-in talk. It’s getting harder and harder to say good-bye to them in the evenings.

He takes so long contemplating how right it feels that Scorpius makes a tortured sound like a dying cat and Draco tilts his head in question.

"Ready, Harry?” Draco asks, and holds out a hand.

Harry grips tight. Yes. Yes, he is.


End file.
